All govt activities eventually become no more than jobs programs.
Answer: The government made it more affordable.
And we all know the collection of clowns on the staff that could be eliminated with the result of 1) lowering costs, 2) reducing totally non-productive low IQ idiots, and 3) raising the academic standards of the university.
You listenin’, diversity dolts?
Socialism. Seemingly unlimited amount of money available when it’s ‘government’ money via student loans.
I think there is a two-tier pricing system in effect. First, grant-heavy, often public, schools have hired more administrators than faculty over the years. A good measure of this is because schools must adhere to certain gov’t guidelines and it seems like each school in the university has a “compliance” administrator and associated support staff. Second, non-grant schools, seeing the price increases at the competition, following a “price-leader” (oligopolistic) model for setting tuition and raise tuition rates. Both place an upward pressure on tuition.
After teaching at the same university for 29 years, I can tell you what made annual tuition go from $1800 to $12,500 during that time:
1) Teacher workloads reduced from 12 credit hours per semester to 9. That resulted in:
2) Hiring more teachers
3) A merit system which made it far too easy for profs to earn generous pay increases annually
4) The hiring of lots of administrative staff
5) Union rules which inflated the cost of everything on campus ($180 to change a fluorescent ceiling light in a classroom, or not allowing janitors to use a plunger on a toilet and charging $210 for a union plumber to come over with a plunger)
6) Wasting money on “woke” departments like Gender Studies, Afro Studies or Philosophy that had fewer than 10 majors.
I’m glad I’m retired.
Supply and demand.
Demand is rising. The number of kids wanting to get into college is increasing, both by simple population growth and by increasing social imperative to.
Supply can’t keep up. The number of school applicants is growing faster than seats to put them in.
Natural economic solution: prices rise. Easiest way to increase “friction” to match demand to supply is raise prices on supply units until enough give up on applying that supply-and-demand balances. This is, as FReepers know and I feel like blathering about, made much harder by Progressives having persuaded gov’t to take over the student loan industry and hand out money like it’s unlimited - prices must go WAY up to get high enough that supply-and-demand balances out.
Between education and real estate, Progressives have this stupidly huge blind spot where they _think_ diplomas and deeds are easily manufactured in great enough numbers that anyone who wants one “should” be able to buy one at an imagined list price. Result is shock that tuition is astronomically high (why not? the money is trivial to get), and mortgages are absurdly expensive in high-demand areas (land: they’re not making any more of it), inducing the cognitive dissonance that “something must be done” as though free money and strictly limited supply can be legislated into luxurious forms at nominal cost.
“A student working full-time over the summer of 1971 would only need to earn $2.70 per hour, at a time when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, to earn enough to pay for a year at a public, four-year college”
Which is what I did the next summer to attend college in the fall of ‘72, only I actually made $3.02/hr (crappy little union job).
Total cost (tuition, room, meal ticket) < $500.
Wife & I have 5 degrees. We eventually learned there’s a lot of organizations willing to pay your tuition, rendering out-of-pocket costs near $0. Of course you can just sign on the dotted line without bothering to research financing alternatives - and pay top dollar for it.
I forgot one major factor in my previous post
7) Government increases in financial aid/student loans. The university admitted it would raise tuition by, for example, 10% one year to match a 10% increase in government financial aid. This harmed middle-income students the most because they usually didn’t quality for financial aid.
More govt. student loans put more money in the system and all the colleges competed for the loot, driving the prices up.
It’s as simple as that.
Greed.
College Students are stupid.
Graduated in '79 with a BA and in '81 with an MS from USC and the total cost was less than $18K.
That was after my Air Force enlistment ended in '74.
What incentive do colleges have to control costs when the government will pick up the tab of their price increases? In a free market system I’d wager few would be willing to pay $40-50,000 for a college degree, especially one in gender studies or other malarkey.