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Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983

• at_a_remove 3y ago
  As someone who had access to various feeds of people in the university and their roles, well, the non-teaching staff numbers just kept going up and up as compared to everything else. Administrative bloat is real.
• paulusthe 3y ago
  In the United States, the growth in spending on administrators from ~2000-present is more than the combined growth of spending on scholarships and professorships combined. Academia in the US has become a business, and the business is being run by the secretaries.
• hnburnsy 3y ago
  Much better data on changes in published and net tuition paid over time... https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-in-college-pricing-student-aid-2022.pdf https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-in-colleg...
  • secabeen 3y ago
    Yes, thank you. The OP analysis is terribly naive. Nameplate tuition has little relationship to what actual students pay. The net data from the college board is much better, and shows that actual tuition paid at many schools is flat over the past decade. The OP also barely acknowledges the huge reductions in state funding for higher ed. In the 60s California paid 100% of educational costs for students. It's now down below 40%. Tuition has gone up to close the gap. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m... > Long-term, controlling the underlying cost of higher ed itself is an imperative. Nothing in the OPs analysis supports any increase in the underlying cost of higher ed. While there may be some, it's well well below the nameplate tuition increases. Here's the best data I have on expenditures by college on a per Full-Student basis, and they are nowhere near what the OP is claming: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_334.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_334.10.a... Lastly, while the argument for some student debt relief is a good one, and his points are well made, the correct policy is Biden's, a universal reduction in debt in the $20-30k range. This gives all students some relief, but doesn't give a regressive windfall relief to doctors, lawyers and other professional students with good career prospects and six-figure debt.
• nathants 3y ago
  now we have wikipedia, stackoverflow, youtube, google, and gpt4. rising tuition is bad, but if schools had retained the monopoly on education they had before it would be fatal instead of annoying. internet and cheap laptops ftw.
• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  The only service category that has outpaced higher education is hospital services. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/ https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century/
  • bmau5 3y ago
    And interestingly both have predominantly grown in "administrative" costs
    • RoyGBivCap 3y ago
      [dead]
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      If we get the government more involved in funding these things directly, it can only improve the outcome.
      • vkou 3y ago
        Funding directly by issuing a blank check to the vendors? No, it won't. Funding directly by setting a price cap, and paying vendors that amount for services rendered? Seems to work for almost every other developed country in the world. With the monetary savings of #2, it could even give every medical student a fully free ride.
        • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
          > Seems to work for I love when someone says "seems to work". In the strict sense, that only ever means "does something". Not necessarily "does what someone wants"... and never "does what I want". When it works for those other countries, does it "do what you want"? Because it doesn't "do what I want" at all. > With the monetary savings of #2, it could even give every medical student a fully free ride. Won't someone think of the millionaire heart surgeons in the 1%? They obviously needed free rides back when they started, it's why they're only single digit millionaires! > Funding directly by setting a price cap, Starving the people you want to provide your medical treatment isn't the brightest strategy. Increases to price caps are always reactive, after they've been complaining for years. The bureaucracy demands that it take years more to raise the price caps. And by the time that happens, they've been bleeding money the whole time. It's a strong incentive for them to do all sorts of things that you don't want... and if you do it for any length of time at all, it trains them to do these bad things so even if you realize the error of your ways and withdrawn the bad policy, they keep on doing the bad things. Quite clearly, the problem with health insurance is that we need a gigantic insurance company larger than any other in history, and that it needs to be managed by the paragons of competency, the federal government. Of course, they'll need to staff up... and with all the layoffs in the private insurance industry, we'll hire all those empathetic, kind-hearted subject matter experts. Should be the best thing ever. I can't possibly see anything that might go wrong.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  Main cause: Government-backed student loans. While it is technically the student paying, in reality the money is going (indirectly) from the federal reserve to the universities. Everyone loves free government money... The fact the student may never pay off those loans (and hence the government foots the bill) is the cherry on top.
  • drew-y 3y ago
    Got a source for that claim?
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Common sense? Government (taxpayers) underwrite unlimited amounts to uninformed buyers paying informed sellers. I am a seller (college boss), and I can boost my own income, and I know I have no competitive pressure to keep prices down, so why not increase the college budget and spending, hence justifying tuition increases.
      • FrustratedMonky 3y ago
        Because it is not 'free'. It puts students in debt. You are boosting your income by exploiting students through usury. Lets say there is no government, then where was the 'competitive' pressure? How does government loans take away competition? Did they close schools to eliminate the competition?
        • lr4444lr 3y ago
          Good faith reading is that he means its risk free to the school, because they get paid up front even if the student doesn't graduate, much less earn enough to pay back his loan.
      • drew-y 3y ago
        Common sense is often wrong. I haven't found any reliable source yet that even mentions the availability government loans as being a driving factor. Based on the limited research I've done over the last few minutes, the main drivers appear to be: 1. A large increase in demand for College. I could imagine this may be, in part, due to more accessible student loans. But it appears that many factors have come into play, and the main one is the perception that you cannot get a liveable wage in this country without a college degree. 2. Less funding from state governments 3. Increased spending in administration and student services unrelated to education. Here are the sources I've read through so far. https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/why-is-college-expensive/ https://www.bankrate.com/loans/student-loans/why-is-college-... https://manhattan.institute/article/a-new-approach-for-curbing-college-tuition-inflation#notes https://manhattan.institute/article/a-new-approach-for-curbi...
• paulpauper 3y ago
  Short-term, students need recourse. Defaulting on loans creates a cascade of consequences that necessarily harm borrowers earning potential for years (e.g. colleges can withholding proof of attendance, decline in credit score, wage garnishments, etc.) There are loans that are highly likely to default regardless after the COVID moratorium on payments ends . no they don't, as mean as this may sound. The data shows that college grads earn way ore than non-grads, even after accounting for inflation and loans. people who fial to finish or fail to attend college do way worse. Thanks to an abundance of aid, scholarships, and other discounts, hardly anyone is paying these inflated tuition prices in full.
• asow92 3y ago
  Won't it go up more if colleges can be assured that students will be bailed out?
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    You're confused. Colleges and universities have made (poor) decisions that have increased their cost, ostensibly to attract enrollment because of all the tuition/fee dollars out there for the taking. If those tuition/fee dollars dry up, then that money isn't out there floating around to chase after with poor decisions. However, all the previous poor decisions were still made, and they're still paying for all the extra buildings and gardens and resort spa dorms thinking they'd have time to pay them off. Not to mention the absurd increases in (non-faculty) staff levels... those people might be looking at unemployment. But, and this is the most important point: allowing bankruptcy is never a bail out. It's the acceptance of reality. Yeh, "loan forgiveness" is sort of screwed up, but why has bankruptcy been denied these people? Why is education debt such an important kind of lending that we must make an exception for it and allow the lender to do what we allow no other lenders to do?
    • asow92 3y ago
      Agree to disagree, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see :popcorn:
    • pixl97 3y ago
      > we allow no other lenders to do? Well, because we don't technically allow debtors prison. It is an unsecured loan which are not really that common.
• spondylosaurus 3y ago
  I would love to see comparative data on how the average college-educated worker's earnings have changed during the same time frame! My guess is that the adjusted wages haven't risen much over time, or at least nowhere near as steeply as the associated education costs have.
  • SideQuark 3y ago
    A better method to analyze college cost is to look at expected lifetime income gain for a college degree vs not having one. If it's significantly net positive, then college is a good investment. Since 1980, that has gone up a lot. This method is
    • lr4444lr 3y ago
      Why is that better? Non graduates also have loan expenses for other things, e.g. businesses or mortgages acquired sooner. You'd want to compare paychecks net of debt payments to look at workable income.
      • SideQuark 3y ago
        College is either a good investment, or it is not. To evaluate, you look at expected returns, just like any investment. Last time I ran numbers, it was one of the best investments one could make; better return than historical stocks, real estate, or just about any similar volatility asset class. You also might want to figure in lifetime expected unemoloyment- there's usually a decent gap between college degreed unemployment rates vs non-degreed rates. And the gains given to skilled vs unskilled are only increasing.
• eschulz 3y ago
  Makes sense when you have student loans backed by the federal government. If an 18 year old with no money and no credit history gets accepted into a qualifying university, she will be able to receive a loan since the bank knows that the government will protect their investment if she fails to pay them back. So now young people have this easy access to credit, and universities can greatly increase tuition and fees with the confidence that their admitted students will be able to pay.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • taeric 3y ago
    Worse than just "backed by the federal government," the loans are basically protected by the government. Being one of the small list of things you can't bankrupt out of, the risk in giving out the loans has been fully pulled from the lenders. It is frustrating to hear the discourse over the inappropriate students that are taking on too much debt, all the while ignoring the lenders that are taking on too much risk. At least, they would be taking on too much risk, if they hadn't captured the market so effectively.
    • GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
      > lenders that are taking on too much risk The lenders are taking no risks since these loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. There are also very large late fees and penalties that can triple (or more) the amount owed.
      • chiefalchemist 3y ago
        In other words, the government gave the leaders license to do "predatory".
        • pclmulqdq 3y ago
          In other words, the government has become a predatory lender with some intermediaries.
• glimshe 3y ago
  Did tuition grow that much more than inflation, or is inflation understated?
  • unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
    Inflation is lumpy. This is the localized rate of inflation in the higher education industry. As another commenter pointed out, TVs have a much more favorable rate.
• borissk 3y ago
  Easy access to credit does that. You can see it in developing countries. Once banks start offering mortgages to regular people, home prices go up five or ten fold in a few years.
• rayiner 3y ago
  From 1991 to 2013, federal student loan issuances increased from $20 billion to over $100 billion (in 2013 dollars). And federal tax expenditures related to education increased from $2.5 billion to over $30 billion. Growing tuitions are a predictable consequence of the federal government subsidizing higher education systems that they don't control (unlike state funding of state universities). The feds should impose price controls on any institution that receives federal funding (including from federal student loans): https://prospect.org/education/case-for-higher-education-price-controls https://prospect.org/education/case-for-higher-education-pri.... Otherwise, costs will predictably skyrocket.
  • f1yght 3y ago
    Isn't part of the issue that state and federal funding for higher education hasn't kept up with costs, so the increase just goes straight to the students paying?
  • sgerenser 3y ago
    I wonder if there's any data comparing tuition growth rates at "normal" schools and those schools that don't accept federal funding of any kind (including federal loans). There's not many of them, and they're usually small, Christian-oriented schools[0], but I'd be curious to see if there's actually any obvious difference in growth rate. A quick google search didn't come up with any data. [0] https://deanclancy.com/a-list-of-colleges-that-dont-take-federal-money/ https://deanclancy.com/a-list-of-colleges-that-dont-take-fed...
• kzrdude 3y ago
  What happens if you compare with real estate prices?
  • treeman79 3y ago
    Imagine if banks didn’t have to worry about if you could afford to pay the loan or not. Every loan would be approved. House prices would sky rocket. This sounds a lot like 2008 housing crash, among others.
• MostlyStable 3y ago
  I couldn't tell from the article or the chart: is that sticker price of tuition or actual paid price? Because those 2 things are _very_ different. It is true that in either case, tuition has outpaced inflation, but I'm skeptical that actual paid tuition has increased by _that_ much.
• I_am_tiberius 3y ago
  Stating that inflation is at 194% can be misleading - it all depends on which products you include in your calculation. It might be more meaningful to differentiate between predictable and measured inflation. Predictable inflation should be defined as the increase in the money supply, while measured inflation could refer to the currently published figures.
• codegeek 3y ago
  It is free money for lenders because backed by the Govt AND protected against bankruptcy. It is Free money for colleges because they know they will get paid regardless. Remove this "free money guarantee" and watch how market corrects itself. When students can file for bankruptcy and/or the debt is not guaranteed by Govt, lenders would now use the same criteria they use to issue credit cards to 18 year olds. Hint: It's tough to get your 1st credit card if you have no credit history in the US and most lenders will not even entertain that idea. Some will do if you put in a collateral like $500 of actual cash deposit to guard against the default risk. When lenders stop lending or get strict, colleges will have to consider how quickly and by how much they keep raising costs.
  • Workaccount2 3y ago
    This isn't going to happen because the whole point of the current government back student loan program is to give kids from not-ideal backgrounds access to credit, and hence access to the full range of schools available.
    • rhplus 3y ago
      Crazy idea, but how about the gov just gives kids from not-ideal backgrounds access to grants and scholarships, rather than credit.
      • Workaccount2 3y ago
        There already is tons of that. The issue is the "full range of schools" part. You can be from a family with a 400 credit score and combined income of $45k, and get loans to go to a $50k/yr university. If the government is going to step in and provide direct funding, it will almost certainly only apply towards community colleges followed by local state schools.
      • itake 3y ago
        How is that different from the current system? People from low or mid-income families have access to scholarships and funding. Kids from ideal backgrounds don’t take out loans. If you’re saying schools get a blank check via grants and scholarships, then I’m not seeing how that fixes the issue. This problem feels super similar to the Us health care system. Those with blank checks for pre-negotiated prices (have health insurance), pay low healthcare costs, and those without pay insane prices. Overall everyone is paying insane prices. Can you explain your reasoning more?
• jurassic 3y ago
  Government lending and a lack of price controls are the ultimate root cause. The government extends near-unlimited credit to student borrowers that goes way beyond their credit-worthiness, academic performance, graduation rates for the school, prospects for employment based on field of study, etc. And universities have clued into the fact that students who can pay any price, will pay any price. The ceiling of what students will pay, if they have sufficient access to credit, to join or maintain their status in the middle class is very very high. So universities hike the price year after year with little resistance because the availability of government borrowing takes the sting out and shifts the pain years or decades into the future of those students' lives. I think some major force is needed to counter-act the runaway price growth without cutting off borrowing for students from low-income families. I think university prices should be capped by law at the inflation rate. Think rent control for tuition.
  • briandear 3y ago
    Rent control results in slums and shortages.
  • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    > Think rent control for tuition. The only thing economists from every politic view can agree is horrible?
    • jurassic 3y ago
      There's no direct comparison to be made with housing shortages. The only scarce educational resources are those that convey high prestige, and there's no way to manufacture more of that through higher tuition payments because it's the scarcity that makes it prestigious. Harvard would be just as prestigious if it were free to attend as if it were $100k/yr to attend. Whereas in housing, if you had people lining up to pay $100k/yr, you'd be throwing up new buildings as quickly as possible. In general there is a an oversupply of higher education capacity due to demographic downturn and a decline in enrollments since 2010. Smaller colleges have been closing because they cannot attract enough students.
  • 3y ago
• Eumenes 3y ago
  Can we talk about the inflation related to the value of the degree as well? A college degree in 1983 is worth alot more than one in 2023.
  • Workaccount2 3y ago
    This is something that always bothers me. People have completely lost sight of the forest for the trees. The entire point of an education is to make you a good worker/citizen. That's it. People completely lose sight of this and think that the point of an education is to get a degree. Therefore we end up with legions of kids trying to "get a degree" as opposed to "become a good worker/citizen".
  • runako 3y ago
    Exactly the opposite. In 2023, a degree is a prerequisite (or effectively so) to a lot of jobs. This was less true in 1983 than it is now.
    • Eumenes 3y ago
      Not if you're independent, resourceful, and motivated to learn. Is there some risk in not going to college, yeah, maybe - but young adults have many years to 'figure it out'. Not all answers lie in institutional credentials. I've worked with dozens of self taught programmers, designers, operators, etc. Look at how much more information is available via the web now vs what was available in 1983.
      • runako 3y ago
        Not disagreeing with anything you are saying. In fact, why get a job at all? Start a business during high school, make millions, and skip it all. There's plenty of information out there to make this a realistic option. However, for people that did not pursue that route, it is also true that many employers require a college degree for many jobs. Some 19-year-olds may "pattern match" well enough to get some hiring managers to grant exceptions. But these are exceptions and by definition not good general advice. > Not all answers lie in institutional credentials. Also consider that the truth of this may depend on the specifics of a job-seeker's phenotype. YMMV.
• londons_explore 3y ago
  I'd like to see a new funding model for universities. I'd like to see universities be able to register for a share of tax revenue from their students post-graduation. For example "This course costs 5% extra income tax for 20 years". Then, you pay nothing for the course, but after you graduate you pay a 5% higher tax rate, and that extra money goes to the university. The IRS would administer the scheme since they already have to do all the math anyway for every taxpayer. This gives the university a strong incentive to make sure their students are productive. They'll help push students into studying finance rather than 'soccer studies'. Obviously the university needs money now, not in 20 years, but private lenders can help cover that gap (and then the lender also has an incentive to make sure the university is doing a good job educating students).
  • sbdaman 3y ago
    This is just an Income Share Agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_share_agreement
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    Yeah, that's an idea. Purdue used to have that, but at some point they stopped https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/06/23/purdue-pauses-new-income-share-agreement-enrollments https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/06/23/purdue-pauses... Ultimately, I think it's a market non-optimal way if you're the university since student loans allow you to decouple pricing entirely and completely derisk the student.
  • f1yght 3y ago
    I think some places have tried it before, but if it's optional then people who think they will earn a lot will just get a traditional loan, and people who think they will earn less get the income based one. So it ends up not being economical to offer.
  • jedberg 3y ago
    The one problem with this scheme is that it turns colleges into job training and nothing else. They would most likely drop any major that doesn't make a lot of future money. There is still value in providing philosophy courses and music and art and all the other things that don't lead directly to high paying jobs.
• funemployed 3y ago
  what happened in 1980?
  • TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
    Universities finally figured out what happened in 1971, and started riding the Wall Street-Federal Government paper money wave.
    • consumer451 3y ago
      https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
• TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  I wonder why University Presidents/ Top Administrators get so much less flak from politicians compared to CEOs, while probably making decisions that further increase the University "profits" all while many make $1mil/year+.
  • borissk 3y ago
    Because CEOs contribute and control a lot more money going to lobbing and politician financing.
• johnny99k 3y ago
  It's because universities have no incentive to lower costs. The majority of students get loans, which transfer to the university and they don't really care if it gets paid back or not. The only way this will stop is if the universities are forced to take on the risk of the debt.
  • throw1234651234 3y ago
    Students will stop attending at some point. Kind of like people will stop paying markups on cars. Or it will become so unattainable that the middle class will protest rising costs.
• preommr 3y ago
  Others have mentioned the proble of government backed loans, but the whole higher education system is broken. People are going in to get a degree with a job, meanwhile there's a whole bunch of administrators and people that think universities should be for rounding out your knowledge so you're required to pay thousands more for courses not needed for your degree. If we really wanted to, I am sure we could condense a bachelors down to 1-2 years with 2-3 years of practical learning in the field.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    The rounding out is absolutely intentional. If we want certificate programs that are shorter and career-focused, those already exist.
• fnord77 3y ago
  students per administrator has gone down down down https://scaleatucla.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/9/2/29923337/4935698_orig.png https://scaleatucla.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/9/2/29923337/4935... stanford has more administrators than undergrads now. administrator growth is like a cancer
• jasonlotito 3y ago
  Remove loans and make colleges and public universities free again. It worked before and worked quite well. All comes back to the failings of Reagan once again.
• dv_dt 3y ago
  In the same time period, stay public university systems had their state funding also decimated. Federally sourced loans were favored over expanding grant programs. The thought that public universities should “run like private businesses” is a disease of neoliberalism. They largely succeeded in running like businesses, but it’s all the wrong metrics. public goods should not be profit centers for state or federal government budgets.
  • dv_dt 3y ago
    *state public university systems. Take away state funding, make it a business objective to capture students, add a abstraction of student loans and direct federal funding, and of course tuition increases.
• phillipcarter 3y ago
  Surprised that nobody here mentioned community colleges yet. Not a silver bullet, but the total cost of someone commuting to a community college from home is an order of magnitude cheaper than going to college. In many cases, CCs have explicit transfer programs, and the chances of transferring to a decent university after year two are pretty high.
  • elpakal 3y ago
    +1, and don't forget that they don't force you to pay room & board for your dorm your first two years. I'm a product of the California Community College system and a lot of my teachers were teaching both in the UC and Cal State systems at the same time. I am happy with the quality of education I received.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Or even just in state colleges. I went to a large public school. It was a great school, but so are the big public flagships found at any state. I knew a lot of people who were out of state, taking loans, to do things like business or premed they could literally do wherever they came from for over half off tuition before you even account for financial aid or scholarships. CCs really aren't that much cheaper than in state rates for public schools, and you can even take certain classes at the local CC and transfer the credits over to the public school to save a little bit per credit hour and have somewhat inflated grades (plenty of people I know did this for their physics or math requirements over a summer). Another way to get free college is to just join the national guard program they have. A few friends did this as well. You do bootcamp which sucks, and like one weekend a month playing army in the woods during drill which I’m told also often sucks. But in the end you get free school and some pay. If you are used to doing hard work like manual labor, a weekend a month is not a bad deal. You can even land a job after through this experience and your degree e.g. in cybersecurity. There are options, obviously not as good as affording it outright but there are things you can do that aren’t going out of state on a huge loan, so I’m surprised why so many people opt to take routes that put them in the same exact place by their mid 20s but with a massive debt over their heads versus these seemingly less glamorous routes. Maybe the marketing of “leaving the parents nest” is just that good?
• hatf0 3y ago
  Can confirm. Currently attending a mid-tier public state school, and I'm looking at ~1200/mo (2000/mo, including housing - living w/ 3 roommates) out of pocket (since I'm trying to avoid taking out loans as much as possible). I've worked up to 2 jobs at the same time just to keep making ends meet. It's really rough out there, and my degree program doesn't even begin to cover fundamental CS concepts like P/NP-completeness, DFAs, etc. Waste of money IMHO.
  • morsch 3y ago
    > It's really rough out there, and my degree program doesn't even begin to cover fundamental CS concepts like P/NP-completeness, DFAs, etc Then it's presumably not a CS degree...?
• mwerd 3y ago
  You have to look at net price not sticker price. faulty analysis. better data here https://usafacts.org/articles/college-tuition-has-increased-but-whats-the-actual-cost/ https://usafacts.org/articles/college-tuition-has-increased-...
  • yardie 3y ago
    You only get the net price after applying and submitting a FAFSA. The net price is only useful if you intend to go there. It's functionally useless for any other purpose. If the price says $100 then for most everyone it's $100.
    • aimor 3y ago
      The number of people where the net price =/= sticker price is growing. "In 2000, 44.4% of all undergraduates received grant aid, whereas in 2016, that number increased to 63.1%."
    • sgustard 3y ago
      I was offered a $10k/year academic scholarship in my state school offer letter, no application required.
    • mwerd 3y ago
      There are resources such as https://collegecost.ed.gov/net-price https://collegecost.ed.gov/net-price to help with the information. College prices are about as real as hospital prices. Sure, some outliers literally pay that much, but the vast majority receive a discounted price for various reasons. When you factor in those discounts, the cost inflation is 2.5x instead of 17x as the article suggests. It's more than a forgettable idiosyncrasy. It's "how it works" and if the author of the article doesn't mention it, they're either so ignorant as to not be worth reading or they're being dishonest. I thought it was important to give that context. American higher Ed is often about prestige and branding. The pricing strategy is similar to luxury goods.
• jmyeet 3y ago
  There are two broad solutions to these kinds of problems: demand-side and supply-side. This article is another data point in exactly why demand-side solutions are short term if they work at all. More likely they don't work. A supply-side solution to education would be to create more spaces in quality higher education and to make those places cheap or free by government subsidy, often with price controls on the receiving institution. This is largely how most of the developed world works. A demand-side solution is to make something more accessible, which has the net effect of increasing demand. This almost always raises prices. It's no surprise that money backed by the government has increased prices. It's inevitable. Demand for high-quality college places still exceeds supply so those colleges can (and do) respond by increasing costs. Sometimes that extra money benefits the students through better facilities (eg a new library, better and/or more dorms, etc). Often however it's lost in subsidizing college sports, which most colleges lose money on, and inflating administrative costs. Division 1 football coaches make millions a year for a supposedly amateur (that's what one of the As in NCAA stands for) competition. That extra money makes those programs more expensive to run too through the same means. We see the same problem in housing. Nearly all legislative efforts are demand-side (eg programs to help first homebuyers) where what we need is simply to increase housing supply by building more units, making more current units available or both. But that runs afoul of vested interests where our homes have become retirement accounts. It's worth noting that many elite colleges are sitting on eye-watering endowments that could easily be used to pay for tuition but they largely don't do that (outside of a few programs for students from poorer backgrounds). Pretty much all of this is by design. Post-WW2 there was a concerted campaign to charge for things that were once cheap or free including health care and education. This is nothing more than economic bondage, the developed world's equivalent of Pakistani brick kilns. A person saddled with debt is a compliant worker who will show up to work and not complain or fight for better working conditions. That's literally the point. It's why the prison population is used as cheap labor. It's why most states like illegal immigration. It's why states are enacting child labor laws. My point is that all of this, including spiralling student debt, is a systemic problem. Education should be free.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  I'm not seeing it explicitly defined but I assume this is the standard asterisk: "In the United States" so I got curious what's happening elsewhere. Average annual tuition in Canada in 2006: CAD $4,400. 2023: CAD $6,834. So I could see it also being in the ballpark of 710% since 1983 as well. https://www.statista.com/statistics/542989/canadian-undergraduate-tuition-fees/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/542989/canadian-undergra...
  • spacechild1 3y ago
    Here in Austria the increase has been 0% :)
• codedokode 3y ago
  Could it be because in capitalism, the seller tries to take as much money as possible from buyer and the price is not related to expenses? Let me give an example that can illustrate this: a typical mobile plan from Verizon in US costs $45/month and gives you 15 Gb of traffic. At the same time in Russia one can get 30 Gb for $9/month. Are expenses for maintaining a cell network 5 times higher in US? Unlikely. It is just customers in US are richer and are ok to pay more for the same service. I don't know how this effect is called, but couldn't the same thing happen to education, land or housing costs? These are obviously things that everyone needs desperately so the seller will squeeze the maximum they can, and the price is unrelated to how much the lecturer earns or how much the bricks cost. The house will cost you almost all your life's earnings no matter where you live.
  • atonse 3y ago
    Isn’t Russia capitalist too? I’m confused but your comparison. Sounds like you’ve just compared two markets without myriad variables. The fact that student loans are backed by the government would in fact undermine this as a good example of a free market.
    • codedokode 3y ago
      Almost every country is capitalist, including Russia. I didn't try to compare capitalist vs non-capitalist countries, I tried to show that in capitalist countries the price of services is not related to expenses. In both countries mobile providers use similar equipment which probably cost the same, but the price they charge from consumers is significantly different.
  • raz32dust 3y ago
    I was with you until "It is just customers in US are richer and are ok to pay more for the same service." How did you reach that conclusion? The other reason (which seems more likely to me) is that it is because the free market is not functioning because of monopoly/duopoly created by regulatory capture.
    • 3y ago
• say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  The problem isn't just that the government is backing the loan program and forcing borrowers to pay. The government also allowed tuition rates to rise. Colleges and Universities increased the price of tuition because they were allowed to.
• drewg123 3y ago
  One thing that was mentioned in the article, but which seems to be missing from the discussion is the decrease in state funding for higher education. When I was looking for colleges in the 80s, the most expensive private schools were on the order of $20K all in. Those same schools are on the order of $85K all in, which is an increase of "only" (hah) 450%. However, my alma mater (SUNY Buffalo) has increased in-state tuition 830% ($1300 to 10.8K). When I went to school there, minimum wage was $3.35/hr. That means that I could work 10 weeks at 40hr/week and pay for my tuition. That's the main reason I graduated without student loan debt. The NYS min. wage is $15/hr, so a student today would have to work 18 weeks to pay for their tuition. We need to increase state funding for higher education.
  • downrightmike 3y ago
    Take home after taxes is only 77% at $15/hr or $1830/month if working 40 hours/week https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-paycheck-calculator#eI2sUvOX3p https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-paycheck-calculator#eI... As of July 2023, the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in SUNY College Purchase, NY is $2,696. This is a 12% increase compared to the previous year. https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/near-suny-college-purchase-ny https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/near-suny-college-purch...
    • rahimnathwani 3y ago
      Minor quibble: the tax rate is a touch lower if you don't work year round. If you earn $10.8k in a calendar year, you'll take home 81%.
  • BeetleB 3y ago
    Indeed. I attended a talk by one of the presidents of a local state university about a decade ago, and she showed a plot showing that the overall cost to educate a student hadn't changed in 30 years (inflation adjusted). What had changed was the state support per student. As it dwindled, the university continually increased the tuition such that the overall cost remained constant. It's one university, so I don't know if it applies to the others, but drops in state support is often excluded from these conversations.
• pneill 3y ago
  The core issue is that there isn't a free market at work here and there are conflicting motivations that are preventing progress toward that model. One the one hand, people want higher education to be affordable and cost effective (which requires a free market) but on the other hand they want higher education available to all even if that means taking on an ROI negative course of study. For example, if we allowed student loans to be a bankruptable form of debt, then over time, certain schools and majors would be unable to get loans, which then could have a series of economic responses such as universities increase tuition for ROI positive majors to support ROI negative majors or some departments might close or we might see consolidation of universities specializing in certain types of education.
• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  We know what happens when it is other people's money. Also fascinating is the increased room and board (square area requirement per student) due to the lack of experience sharing rooms in the family as family sizes have collapsed to sub replacement levels.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    Funny because all the other countries that use literal public funds to pay for all of college do not have this problem.
    • sixstringtheory 3y ago
      My understanding is that other countries that bankroll higher education also get to decide who even goes on to that level of study. Could you provide a list of countries you had in mind so we could see if they have that kind of process?
• prewett 3y ago
  I think these statistics are meaningless without discussing how much state/federal funding has been removed. The article briefly mentions it, but gives no idea of what percentage of tuition was effectively state funded in 1980/1983. I'm not sure where to get that information, and I expect tuition costs will have risen faster than inflation + reversion to students paying the true cost, but without that information these numbers are misleading at best.
• cool_dude85 3y ago
  I'm curious if anyone has run the numbers on tuition versus direct state spending on higher education. What is the trend for overall spending on public higher ed since 1983, for instance? How much of the increase in tuition fees is to make up for decreased direct subsidization?
• jibbit 3y ago
  There was a #1 hn submission some time ago about a theory of how/why things have risen is price i.e. cost of educating a child now vs 100 years ago, but exam results are no better, cost of keeping someone in prison etc. but crime is no lower, etc. it gave a name to the phenomenon. I would like to find it, if that rings a bell with anyone..
• mberning 3y ago
  If lenders actually had to evaluate their chances of getting paid back what percentage of students do you think would not receive a loan? 50%? We need to make student loan debt dischargable in bankruptcy and the problem will be solved overnight. Lenders will suddenly take a keen interest in determining which students are serious and have a reasonable chance for success.
• ilamont 3y ago
  We have two kids in the in-state university system which are considered "affordable" relative to private colleges ($35k all in for tuition/room/board/misc per student per academic year vs. $65k-$85k) but are laughably expensive compared to almost any other country in the world. If we didn't set up 529 plans years ago loans would be our only option to pay for the quarter of a million dollars required for both of them. If they were in private colleges, the combined outlay would be well over half a million dollars. FWIW we did look at Canadian schools which may be affordable to Canadians, but not to international students ... mid 40s pre-Covid when my oldest was applying.
• ochoseis 3y ago
  Anecdata, but graduated in ‘08 and it looks like the chart roughly matches the doubling in tuition in the university I attended since then. I used loans to pay for my education, and one effect that has from an individual level is that it really changes your appetite for risk during the payoff. From a macro level it’s probably nice to have indebted young people motivated to work; however, I’m sure it produces a lot fewer entrepreneurs willing to gamble on a great idea.
• RyanAdamas 3y ago
  Accreditation Boards Textbook Publishers University Tuition It's a triangle scheme where one feeds the other and it's all fueled by non-dischargeable government loans. Student Loans are the hill to die on. As someone who isn't eligible for Military Service, I don't get supplemental housing, free healthcare, free college education, hiring preferences, small business loan preferences, nor a lifetime of "OH THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!!", and that's if you aren't one of MILLIONS of Veterans gaming the VA disability system. The military decided asthmatics and ADHD kids will forever be second class citizens because we can't join the drunken sexfest that is modern military service; which has essentially become a daycare for 18-24 year-olds. It's absolutely unconstitutional for the military to relegate individuals to specific spectrums of society given how they were born. I'm not gay so I guess that doesn't matter. But, who cares? If the Constitution mattered we wouldn't be where we are today.
  • enono 3y ago
    sir this is a wendys
    • RyanAdamas 3y ago
      I can't downvote you, but the fact you find huge segments of people being left behind and forced into predatory loans simply for an education they should have received in high school while the military industrial complex forces its tendrils into every facet of American life funny, I can only assume you realize how wrong it is and can't handle the dissonance.
  • malfist 3y ago
    > can't join the drunken sexfest that is modern military service Wait, what did I miss?
    • RyanAdamas 3y ago
      Apparently you missed being social. Having worked with a number of vets it's absolutely true. Here, in case you missed this too: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/11/19/365220051/marine-corps-finds-it-tough-to-shut-down-sexist-facebook-groups https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/11/19/36...
• fwungy 3y ago
  I watched the university I was in for graduate school add all sorts of campus buildings, luxury apartments, and new administrative titles and hierarchies. Handing out massive contracts is a good job, but it's all borne on the students backs, and most of that stuff was not necessary for a good education. They do a lot of catering to student egos too to get them in the door - "ooh, you're so special and wonderful, we're going to help you make it with our programs", knowing full well that most of the degrees were garbage.
• iaseiadit 3y ago
  Surely the problem will go away if President Biden simply uses US taxpayer money to pay off student’s loans. That’s the smartest course of action, not blatant pandering to young voters that will only perpetuate the underlying problems.
• jxramos 3y ago
  I was just asking colleagues at work in response to the supreme court ruling on the student debt forgiveness stuff whether or not they experienced yearly tuition increases every single year they were enrolled--straight monotonic increase. I got many yes emoji's tagged onto that post so I knew I wasn't the only one. I can only imagine that treadmill never stopped for people.
• m3kw9 3y ago
  Supply demand pricing has to be part of this equation
• xd1936 3y ago
  I work IT for an institution that is currently kicking off a campaign to transform the business model of higher education. We're currently one of the more expensive private liberal arts schools in Michigan, and we want to pivot to fully funded tuition for all students. We have been talking a lot lately, just like OP, about how this cost trajectory in Higher Ed is unsustainable. We want to instead build a cycle of generosity. 1. https://hope.edu/forward https://hope.edu/forward 2. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/a-good-circle https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/a-good-c... 3. https://youtu.be/A-c3h6J8ZKk https://youtu.be/A-c3h6J8ZKk 4. https://youtu.be/VssQtdXWqSs https://youtu.be/VssQtdXWqSs
• AaronFriel 3y ago
  And yet, college is still worth it. While many folks like to point out the Baumol effect aka cost disease, it's also important to remember that college is overwhelmingly worth it, and the government ought to subsidize college educations. There's no better investment the government can make than subsidize more people to go to college. (Well, perhaps except for funding the IRS, but that's more of a zero-sum game.) See: https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/collegepayoff.pdf https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2011/c... Lifetime net earnings increase for progressively higher levels of education, resulting in overall GDP growth and a wealthier society better able to pay for public goods and the social welfare of all. The vast majority of college students who attend a 2 or 4 year in-state program will net a significant increase in lifetime earnings and the amount they pay for that degree, even assuming they maximized their federal loans, will be dwarfed by their lifetime earnings increase. Even for those folks getting masters degrees to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Department of Education finds that the lifetime net earnings increase by nearly $1.5 million over a high school education, and yes, actually, around $300k over a Bachelor's degree.
• throw9away6 3y ago
  Part of this is probably because real inflation has been undercounted.
• tkiley 3y ago
  a counterpoint to this narrative: grants/scholarships have been rising rapidly, so actual net tuition prices are surprisingly flat in recent years. > Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, COA [cost of attendance] increased by around 27% at both types of institutions, but declined by 7-8% in the few years after that. The recent decline occurred because colleges posted similar nominal COA increases as in the past, but inflation was higher. Overall, COA increased by almost 20% over those 16 years at both types of institutions. > But average net prices rose at a considerably more modest pace. Between 2006-07 and 2019-20, average net price increased by 13% and 7% at public and private four-year institutions, respectively. Those increases reversed in the post-COVID years. Overall, average net prices are largely unchanged, adjusted for inflation, compared to 2006-07. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/college-prices-arent-skyrocketing-but-theyre-still-too-high-for-some/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/college-prices-arent-skyr... in the past 15 years in particular, the big story of college pricing is that it has become more progressive, i.e. more expensive for those with higher incomes.
  • intrasight 3y ago
    I can vouch for this. My daughter went to Yale. I paid the "Yale tax" of 20% of my income. An that only because I made more than $100K. Below $100K parental salary and it's free. "List Price" is meaningless at university.
• clusterhacks 3y ago
  I am beginning to believe that the root cause of tuition costs in the US exceeding inflation is based much more on FOMO on the benefits of college education rather than federal government guarantees on student loans. My claim is that buyers (parents+children) of college degrees are maybe not behaving rationally with respect to cost. High-cost schools position themselves as offering a "better" outcome or opportunity to students. I'm really conflicted about this viewpoint. I have two children in high school with one a rising senior. So my family is discussing colleges and college costs somewhat regularly. We have visited a small number of state schools and a small number of smaller private universities and colleges. The smaller schools do a VERY good job of selling extra opportunities easily available to students. My experience is that opportunities can be found by a motivated college student at any institution but the small private schools seem to make it almost hard for a student to NOT be involved in meaningful outside-of-the-classroom options.
  • kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The advantage of the larger school in my experience, is that its like going to a dozen small schools at once. Plenty of people I know where able to transfer from one good program to another in a completely opposite field once they learned what they actually liked (usually quite different than what you imagined as a highscooler especially if your parents have no concept of the field), because the school was large enough to offer so many good options and departments with a lot of interesting faculty. The class sizes are the same between big and small schools anyhow for the most part, but you also have an easier time scheduling classes (and taking certain ones “out of season” if need be) at the larger school. It scales horizontally rather than vertically as your student body increases, big schools have the pockets to hire more faculty and support more taships than smaller schools.
    • BeetleB 3y ago
      I think you and GP are using different definitions of "larger". One definition is "more programs". Another is merely "more students". Generally, go for the one with the lower student:teacher ratio. My anecdote: I and a friend both went to low ranked undergrad universities (state schools). Mine, however, had a low student:teacher ratio per class. Comparing notes with him, the main benefit was that professors actually cared about teaching. The number of students wasn't high enough to be a burden. They didn't repeat the same HW and exams every semester. The number of office hours per week per professor was 3-9 hours. They could be that generous because there simply weren't enough students to use up those hours. We also didn't have TAs teaching any course. (Also went to a top ranked university for grad school - very few professors cared about teaching).
• tlogan 3y ago
  During the same period the house prices have risen 586% I think the way we calculate inflation is kinda weird.
  • uejfiweun 3y ago
    Kinda weird? That's a nice way to say "total bogus". It strikes me that the CPI is practically propaganda at this point, a way to placate the citizens by saying "oh look inflation is fine", distracting them from the mega-hyper asset price inflation that has been happening over the past 40 years. Suppose it kind of makes sense, since the rich control the country, and they are the ones directly benefitting from the asset price inflation.
  • _ea1k 3y ago
    I was thinking along similar lines. Overall cost of living as certainly increased by more than 200% during that timeframe.
• ursuscamp 3y ago
  I love all of the creative ways they use to exclude inflation from the inflation statistics.
• 300bps 3y ago
  Harvard has 2,000 students per year and a $50 billion endowment. That is enough to refund $500,000 to every student they've had for the past 50 years. Why are universities hoarding so much money? https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-20-largest-college-endowments-changed-2022/642997/ https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-20-largest-college-end... Why are universities hiring so many administrators in relation to professors and students? https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/one-culprit-in-rising-college-costs https://www.usnews.com/education/articles/one-culprit-in-ris...
  • Kon-Peki 3y ago
    Harvard admits 2,000 undergraduates per year, but it has almost 3x as many graduate students as undergraduates. As far as private universities go, Harvard is a really big school.
• therealmarv 3y ago
  If you look at the whole World: It's a country specific problem. There are even English speaking graduation programs with international degrees abroad from top universities everywhere. To give some examples study in Sweden, Denmark, Germany etc and spend nearly no money on tuition. Factor the cost of living in and it's overall still cheaper than studying in the US. And I have no doubt that people grow personally (beside the education side) if they spend a good amount of time in another country. It's just not super easy and super obvious to think out of the box.
  • jansan 3y ago
    Some companies even pay your study. You do a regular BS at a university (or college), work as an intern at the company between terms, and the company will pay you 1000€+ per month over a period of 3 to 5 years. This is not a scholarship, but a mixture of apprenticeship and study (called "dual study"), which is becoming increasingly popular at least in Germany.
• anovikov 3y ago
  Well, speaking of loan forgivance - i am not really sure how it is supposed to work. Just allow to also let go of student debt when declaring bankruptcy, and revoking the degree?
• aj7 3y ago
  “Prices will rise to absorb any subsidies.”
• mnd999 3y ago
  Where’s the money going? I’m not seeing evidence for 5x better research outcomes.
• gumby 3y ago
  As a single datapoint, in 1983 MIT tuition hit $10K -- highest in the nation according to a cartoon in the paper. It's currently $60K (total cost estimated $80K) so 7X is about right. However there's another way to look at it: over the summer I would earn over $10K so roughly covered my tuition. Admittedly that was at the high end of summer job compensation due to the AI boom, but gives you a rough idea of where that tuition fee fit. I finished school with no debt. These days I doubt anyone is getting $50K for a summer job.
  • jeron 3y ago
    >These days I doubt anyone is getting $50K for a summer job. Enter Citadel: https://fortune.com/2023/06/28/wall-street-citadel-summer-intern-pay/ https://fortune.com/2023/06/28/wall-street-citadel-summer-in...
    • gumby 3y ago
      More than Google! It's possible some grad students in AI are getting that kind of money these days. I was talking about my undergrad.
  • gen220 3y ago
    Big tech and big-tech-competitive places will generally pay you around $30k pre-tax for a summer job. But of course, most college students don't have access to those jobs at all, let alone for each summer in college.
• fmajid 3y ago
  Universities are the gatekeepers for good white-collar jobs, and will charge whatever the market will bear, which is quite a lot. Government subsidies are absorbed as pure profit. The money goes into cushy salaries for administrators and empire-building, specially in real estate.
• Bloating 3y ago
  this is corporate greed, end-stage capitalism and Bush's fault. Or is it Trump's fault? And Elon Musk's mgmt of twitter
• _ea1k 3y ago
  Why is this understating the increase in overall inflation to such a large degree?
• SkyMarshal 3y ago
  Should probably measure this before and after the US left the gold standard in 1971. The question is, which contributed more, leaving the gold standard, or some Reagan era policies?
• propercoil 3y ago
  I don't know anyone with half a brain who would believe real inflation was only 194% during this whole time.
  • tlogan 3y ago
    Exactly. For example, house prices increased 7x. S&P 500 jumped 11x.
• whyenot 3y ago
  Tuition and fees in California's CSU system are still only about $8k per year. The CSU system provides a very good education, in some ways better than the more prestigious UC system because there tends to be more opportunities for direct contact with instructors. In the sciences, there are often more research opportunities and spaces for undergraduate students in labs. It's a real bargain, and you can save even more money by doing your first two years at a community college.
  • YeBanKo 3y ago
    Some of my favorite most professional colleges are from San Jose State, which is a part of CSU. Obviously, it is anecdotal, but I do see in them very practical no bullshit attitude, yet strong theoretical fundamentals.
• deeg 3y ago
  I think another reason for the increase is that it's one of the few industries where they can charge as much as possible. The price is basically determined by: Student: How much does it cost to attend your school? University: How much do you have? The base cost is some ridiculously high value and can be brought down with grants/scholarships/loans, which are needs based.
• tyingq 3y ago
  Well, and wages haven't kept pace with inflation either. And I'm sure other categories aside from tuition vastly outpace inflation. Cost for health insurance for US folks, for example.
• hk__2 3y ago
  Can we add "American" in the title? Not everyone on HN is from the US.
• chmod600 3y ago
  The only thing that keeps a system functional is external pressure. Otherwise it will always turn into some weird messed up versions of itself that satisfies none of the original objectives but is somehow larger than ever. Universities used to be separate systems, and you could opt out of one and into another, and most people wouldn’t even go to one at all. But now they are basically all parts of one whole (within the US, at least) and everyone is going and the universities are all failing in the same way. It could be financial, but I think it’s because of the academic track and social status. There’s a consensus that college is good and will turn you into a professional leader with a nice job title that reflects elite values (which happen to be a certain kind of liberal but it’s more about social status than politics philosophy). But it turns out the world only needs so many Environmental Justice Media Liaisons, so the universities are just making up these job titles to absorb their own graduates. Of course, that doesn’t work well financially, so they pay them nothing for as long as possible and then close to nothing after that, and crank up the tuition promising the next batch the same deal. The students put up with it because it’s hard to evaluate the numbers that they can actually expect from such a ridiculous job, and because it sounds like a cool (or at least acceptable) job title to announce at parties. The fact that a plumber makes three times as much is not worth acknowledging.
• m1n1 3y ago
  What is the "best" thing for students to do? What is the "best" thing for parents to do? For "best", I'm interested in two things: making the system less broken, and the kiddos being ok as adults.
• Tempest1981 3y ago
  What was the corresponding increase in teacher salaries?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• octacat 3y ago
  It is getting expensive to live.
• japhyr 3y ago
  I would love to know how other HN parents are thinking about postsecondary education for your kids. I started undergrad in 1990, and I have a 12yo now. I understand financial planning, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how to think about college. Does anyone have insight beyond "Don't pay a tuition amount that's out of line with likely earnings"?
• TheMagicHorsey 3y ago
  We are seeing the perverse incentives of subsidized and free education. There are few barriers to increasing the cost of something if neither the consumer or supplier have sensitivity to cost at the time the purchase is made. And loans defer the pain for students in a way that makes them basically insensitive to the eventual cost of their education. People react to incentives. Systems react to incentives. America has been ignoring this for 50 years.
• spaceman_2020 3y ago
  I studied a year abroad in a US public university back in 2008. Annual tuition back then was around $10k. In local currency, that was about 400,000. Today, that tuition is $28k. But the dollar has also appreciated so real cost in local currency is now 2,268,000 - an appreciation of 467%.
• bastardoperator 3y ago
  Here in California you can go to JC almost if not completely free. Transfer to a UC school with TAP (guaranteed), and save considerable amounts of money. I will never recommend paying for a 4 year university, it's just not worth it when you can get the same exact diploma for half the price.
• tboyd47 3y ago
  And has the populace gotten more educated?
• foolinaround 3y ago
  if we had to eat this elephant one bite at a time, one option to consider is completely seperating sports from colleges? What would be the impact? What are the drivers that could enable youth to participate in sports run/administered by a 3rd party as well as attend college?
• tomohawk 3y ago
  Universities are heavily subsidized industries with little or no oversight. Any other industry has all kinds of regulations and consumer protections they have to comply with. A university is allowed to sell degrees to unsophisticated buyers, and if the degree is worthless, they are not on the hook. Who else can do that? Universities never experience recessions or any other kind of contraction, so they never have to shed dead weight. The administrator to student/faculty ratio is way out of whack. Student loans should be guaranteed by the university, not by the government. If the university has enough confidence in admitting a person and conferring a degree, they should stand behind it.
• samtho 3y ago
  This data is what I used to convince my parents were very much anti-student loan forgiveness (we paid ours so you get to suffer too), that a certain level of it is appropriate. I honestly don’t think a lot of people realize just how bad its gotten. Couple this with the fact that somehow budget is limiting the number classes being offered with the extra 1.5 semesters on average of additional general education requirements, and you’ve created a system that predates new adults, pushing them underwater from the start. A bit ironic that we’ve had the lowest wage growth in 60+ years just as the cost to get a degree, the default requirement for almost any job, skyrocketed. These loans students took out to go to university cannot be dismissed and will follow you until the day you die. This debt bondage of people just turning 18, is pure horseshit. We supposedly outlawed indentured servitude but it’s still style alive and well, and our machiavellian, geriatric congress in the US has offered nothing besides cruel indifference, useless excuses, and is distracted arguing about shit like drag performance and bathrooms? Like what the fuck.
• whall6 3y ago
  S&P has risen 2,200%+ since then as well
• csw-001 3y ago
  Viewed in this light, grade inflation really hasn’t kept up.
• rglover 3y ago
  A little anecdote that made me realize the college I went to was running a racket: I remember getting lunch freshman year and one day, the signs in the student union cafeteria were printed on poster board and the next they were flat screen TVs. When I asked the on duty manager why, they just said "because it's more eco friendly." My entire world view shifted in that moment.
  • mattmoose21 3y ago
    I don't know if my world view would shift from an answer given off the cuff by someone who is not an expert in that domain. There are many rationales for switching to screens including easier to update and may be seen as more up to date.
• LatteLazy 3y ago
  In england we refer to this as "pulling up the ladder behind you".
• randcraw 3y ago
  My preferred solution is to establish an open university in the US (or make it borderless), through which anyone can earn a degree remotely for as little cost as possible -- like $5000 per year or $20k per degree. Georgia Tech and others have shown this is possible (see their 13 MS degree programs in engineering). Certainly by enlisting the growing set of tools used for remote professional collaboration, it should be possible to cover a wide variety of subjects, especially if the staff is also remote (and not overpriced). Compared to the $240K of almost all private colleges in the US, a viable alternative that costs only $20k should quickly reset the cost of advanced education to be a LOT more reasonable. In addition, a cheap remote-only college system be a great resource for many people who want to take college courses but live nowhere near a full-time school, or who need retraining as they change careers or advance professionally. Really, this solution is long overdue.
  • notashillthrow6 3y ago
    See: - Western Governors University (WGU) - Open University (OU) Both online; both relatively cheap. N.B. Georgia Tech’s online masters programs are professional masters and not research/thesis masters — so unless you are getting paid by someone else to get them, they are almost certainly a waste of money (and there is negative selection pressure during hiring for people with these sorts of degrees).
    • peanuty1 3y ago
      > there is negative selection pressure during hiring for people with these sorts of degrees This is a great point.
    • randcraw 3y ago
      My 35 years of experience after a comparable part-time MS in CS says otherwise. Professional masters are often compared to a BS curriculum, which is in no way a disability to hiring or advancement since most people in engineering don't have research degrees nor need them to thrive. In fact, the presence of a research thesis in lieu of taking a couple more courses in useful subjects would be more of a waste in the real world than the reverse, IMHO.
• gitfan86 3y ago
  My favorite idea that I have seen is allowed students to return their degrees for a 70% refund within 12 months of graduation. If the school is confident that the degree will be a great asset throughout the person's career it will be no problem. This is how lemon laws work with cars.
• araes 3y ago
  The situation for students is pretty close to a double bind situation [1]: - Get loans and go to school, or I (your family, society, the job market) will punish you. - Do not get loans, or I (the economy, lenders, your credit score) will punish you. - You must got to higher education and get a degree, but only if you want to. ("college isn't for everybody", except all we ever say is a HS education is a dead end). - With a blaming tertiary of "You should have already know that and realized what an issue large student debt was before taking the loans. Why are you trying to act like such a victim?" And I admit, I've fallen into this previously of "how did they borrow so much money?" Except its this same issue of "we put you in a bad situation, and then blame you for not escaping earlier." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind
  • derelicta 3y ago
    Sshhhh your theory implies systemic issues. And everyone knows the individual is supposed to be the one to be blamed for that!
• rokkitmensch 3y ago
  What's that compounded annually, though?
• OJFord 3y ago
  And in 1983 they were down how much since 1943? (Or some close pre-war point if you want, I'm not cherry-picking.)
• NickC25 3y ago
  Not to mention the likes of McGraw-Hill and other textbook makers deciding that since students have to go to school, they're free to charge said students whatever they want. Those companies are for-profit and publicly traded, meaning they have to, by law, increase profits every quarter. Reprinting a new edition every year with minimal changes but a nice $50 price increase (on top of the book already costing several hundred) is a nice way to do that. Sick bastards, the lot of them.
• coffeedan 3y ago
  The sources cited in the “710%” chart don’t seem to have any data to support the thesis. What is the source for this data? (see https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics and https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2020/04/student-loan-default-has-serious-financial-consequences https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-shee...)
• 8bitsrule 3y ago
  "In 2022, the relative values of $100.00 from 1983 ranges from $249.00 to $701.00.... A simple Purchasing Power Calculator would say the relative value is $294.00. This answer is obtained by multiplying $100 by the percentage increase in the CPI from 1983 to 2022." - https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/ https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/uscompare/
• KETpXDDzR 3y ago
  I think using the CPI is flawed. Especially because the formula to calculate it changed. Also, more efficient industries yield cheaper products. This puts downward pressure on the CPI. I don't think this can be applied to tuition in this magnitude. For comparison, M2 money supply increased 10-fold the last 40 years.
• tekknik 3y ago
  The article lost me at the continued suggestion we forgive debt. If the gov wants to wholesale forgive debt, send everybody a check. Otherwise it isn’t fair to those who have no degree, couldn’t afford one or get loans, or already paid theirs off or paid cash.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• nojvek 3y ago
  a16z had a great article on govt interference raising costs through the roof. 710% rise in education costs is American exceptionalism and greed. If the federal govt stopped backing loans and let the market play out, the prices would come down. If they removed employment sponsored healthcare loophole, and allowed a transparent pricing (like the one you get from your car mechanic before they fix your car), prices would come down. There’s nothing magically different in health insurance vs car insurance. I’m gonna get downvoted for this. Democrats have a good heart, but when they start giving away money, it’s not well thought out on how supply will react to increased demand. PPP loans were a huge clusterfuck of giving out free money. Now they’ve blown the debt ceiling. The goal should be to lower prices, not to doll out more free money. Inflation in house prices is nuts. So you’ve got young people who can’t afford to own their home, ridden in education debt they may not be able to pay, not having kids since they can’t afford em. Doesn’t look like a bright economic future.
• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  Yup, so has everything else, everywhere.