You don't get to have that though. College could be cheaper in a past era, because in some ways it was the byproduct and not the actual product. Byproducts can be sold cheaply, because the main product is where the profit center lies. But byproducts are also really limited... there was just enough for 5-10% of the population to attend. When that was asked to be scaled up to something approaching 100%, the original supply could not handle it. And if you do scale up for a byproduct, it's no longer the byproduct. Turns out it was costly. Someone has to pay.
That's not even the only mechanism at work causing costs to spiral out of control. If universities have to compete to persuade students to attend their own campus rather than some rivals, it seemed really expedient to build nicer dormitories. One lady I worked with described that when she attended back in the 1940s, it was four students sharing square footage that sounded like a closet to me. The modern dorms at the local university are now about x6 the square footage, but only house 2 students. They're much more nicely furnished, larger, and have more amenities. But not just the dorms... the grounds are nicer. Lots of nice new halls and buildings. All networked like a spaceport. I wonder how many big flatscreens I could count if I wandered through campus for an hour.
All of these things cost, and the cost was passed on to students for tuition. All so universities could try to take market share from other universities. But even if you change that, the universities didn't pay for those things in cash. It was all financed, and they'll be paying the mortgage on them for decades more. Someone has to pay for that.
None of this comes without maintenance either. The number of staff exploded. They all need salaries. And to manage so many staff, administrative overhead grew. They all need big salaries.
College can't ever get cheaper. And any attempt to tinker with it will result in catastrophe I think. If someone tries, a few of those with the largest endowments might limp along, but most of the states will consolidate and downsize state schools, and the smaller privates will just wither away into insolvency and closures. There are hints that this might already be starting.
Residential college. For most, college will look more like community college, commuter college, night school and other extension sites, or online college.
As you say, this is already underway in the US (due to the “demographic cliff” in projected high school graduates in most states).
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You don't get to have that though. College could be cheaper in a past era, because in some ways it was the byproduct and not the actual product. Byproducts can be sold cheaply, because the main product is where the profit center lies. But byproducts are also really limited... there was just enough for 5-10% of the population to attend. When that was asked to be scaled up to something approaching 100%, the original supply could not handle it. And if you do scale up for a byproduct, it's no longer the byproduct. Turns out it was costly. Someone has to pay.
That's not even the only mechanism at work causing costs to spiral out of control. If universities have to compete to persuade students to attend their own campus rather than some rivals, it seemed really expedient to build nicer dormitories. One lady I worked with described that when she attended back in the 1940s, it was four students sharing square footage that sounded like a closet to me. The modern dorms at the local university are now about x6 the square footage, but only house 2 students. They're much more nicely furnished, larger, and have more amenities. But not just the dorms... the grounds are nicer. Lots of nice new halls and buildings. All networked like a spaceport. I wonder how many big flatscreens I could count if I wandered through campus for an hour.
All of these things cost, and the cost was passed on to students for tuition. All so universities could try to take market share from other universities. But even if you change that, the universities didn't pay for those things in cash. It was all financed, and they'll be paying the mortgage on them for decades more. Someone has to pay for that.
None of this comes without maintenance either. The number of staff exploded. They all need salaries. And to manage so many staff, administrative overhead grew. They all need big salaries.
College can't ever get cheaper. And any attempt to tinker with it will result in catastrophe I think. If someone tries, a few of those with the largest endowments might limp along, but most of the states will consolidate and downsize state schools, and the smaller privates will just wither away into insolvency and closures. There are hints that this might already be starting.
Residential college. For most, college will look more like community college, commuter college, night school and other extension sites, or online college.
As you say, this is already underway in the US (due to the “demographic cliff” in projected high school graduates in most states).