Colleges are full of it: Behind the three-decade scheme to raise tuition...

SALON magazine ^ | 6/8/2014 | Thomas Frank

[Loud Mime]

Tuition is up 1,200 percent in 30 years. Here's why you're unemployed, crushed by debt -- and no one is helping

The price of a year at college has increased by more than 1,200 percent over the last 30 years, far outpacing any other price the government tracks: food, housing, cars, gasoline, TVs, you name it. Tuition has increased at a rate double that of medical care, usually considered the most expensive of human necessities. It has outstripped any reasonable expectation people might have had for investments over the period. And, as we all know, it has crushed a generation of college grads with debt. Today, thanks to those enormous tuition prices, young Americans routinely start adult life with a burden unknown to any previous cohort and whose ruinous effects we can only guess at.

[4Liberty]

Why is Education so costly? Answer: Unions. There are 6 unions on my campus! They over-pay everyone, from Deans (Teamsters) and faculty (AFT) to office workers (AFL-CIO). The DNC skims union dues off of this growing, overpriced, public-sector largess. With a third party, the Taxpayer, pays for these overpriced services, there you have Moral Hazard problem. We have a huge waste of taxpayer funded education expenditures, since the end-users (the consumers), the banks (who don't do the lending and bear the risks as they should -- its the govt), and the students themselves don't really care what their feminist-haiku-studies Major is, since taxpayers are forced to pay, and will also eventually eat the bad loans as well. The students end up living with their parents, and the productive (useful) economy we ALL depend on shrinks, due to wasted capital dollars.

[raybbr]

Of course tuition has gone up. The massive decline in state support has driven this madness as state funds continue to be rerouted to welfare programs.

Huh? Seriously? We should be subsidizing college even more?

[SeaHawkFan]

If not for easy to get loans, the demand would much less at current prices.

The inelasticity is not a straight line.

There is also an indifference curve to consider, as well as opportunity costs.

[informavoracious]

Maybe I am dumb, but how would tax cuts negatively impact private colleges? Their prices have skyrocketed too, maybe more than public colleges.

[353FMG]

It cost me a total of $2400 in tuition money to get from Freshman to MSChE. in the early sixties.

Of course, for $2400 you could also buy a brand new Ford Mustang in those days.

[Thorliveshere]

Geez, the gov’ wants to price-control every gawbdamned thing, minimum wage, oil, how much CEO’s make, how much sports figures make, and on and on, and yet they can’t put a big damper on Universities?

[21twelve]

“Of course, for $2400 you could also buy a brand new Ford Mustang in those days.”

I have no idea what a new Mustang costs. $30,000??? That’s less than a year and a half of state university. Look no further than the housing crash (brought on by easy loans, the idea that everyone should own a home, etc.) to see where this ends up.

My lib sister was talking about some friend who got rich in computers then went broke trying to sell high-end cars. “But, now that they are broke the government will pay for there daughter’s college!” (SERIOUSLY!!!!????)

[Neoliberalnot]

I simply offered the explanation of facts. You can interpret however you wish. Perhaps you think money spent on welfare is the answer. You might consider that public education has been around for more than 2 centuries and has played a role in making us a world power; most importantly, the sciences, math, and engineering programs.

[raybbr]

I simply offered the explanation of facts. You can interpret however you wish. Perhaps you think money spent on welfare is the answer. You might consider that public education has been around for more than 2 centuries and has played a role in making us a world power; most importantly, the sciences, math, and engineering programs.

I'm amazed that a rational person operates on the premise that the two (govt. college subsidies and welfare) are NOT mutually exclusive. You can reduce both. Accusing me of "thinking money spend on welfare" is a solution is both disingenuous and absurd.

You are the one that thinks that collegiate welfare (The massive decline in state support has driven this madness as state funds continue to be rerouted to welfare programs) is somehow the answer.

Please explain why you thing public money is needed for Americans to be educated.

[Old North State]

The label on the vertical axis of your Michigan v. Ed. Appropriations indicates it is the per cent of total Appropriations so there is no way to determine if it represents a decrease in dollars. It may simply indicate that the legislature refused to go along with the spending madness. Remember, whatever amount the legislature appropriates in used to finance the ever growing spending by the universities. It is not used to offset tuition. It merely means the total will be higher. I don't have any knowledge of Michigan per se, but the cost of delivering education at public universities across the US had more than doubled the rate of inflation over the last two decades.

[Yo-Yo]

How's this one:

[brooklyn dave]

Personally, today, I don’t think a bachelor’s in any field —maybe except sciences, accounting, or something concrete is worth the thousands of dollars that students/student’s parents paid for it. Academia is one of the biggest mafias going. I live near NYU in Manhattan and these people never stop building—I can imagine what they’re charging their students. College has become more of a rite of passage than what one actually learns. How many people jokingly say that their major was partying? It’s become if one doesn’t have a degree one is relegated to working in McDonald’s....education must be centered around the real working world.

[VanShuyten]

“It cost me a total of $2400 in tuition money to get from Freshman to MSChE. in the early sixties.
Of course, for $2400 you could also buy a brand new Ford Mustang in those days.”

I saw on a thread here a couple of days ago that the average student debt was $28,000, which, coincidently, is about as much as a new Mustang costs.

[cloudmountain]

No question that many students do wash out. I simply offered up the biggest reason that tuition has risen so dramatically. In some cases, state support has gone from more than 80% at public institutions to less than 20%, and every year the support continues to erode. It is just one more of the rat traps to undermine education while enhancing welfare dependents.

True enough.
If students really want an education there IS always night and weekend classes.

[Neoliberalnot]

You might consider that public education has been around for more than 2 centuries and has played a role in making us a world power; most importantly, the sciences, math, and engineering programs. Public education means it was funded by taxes. Each state used federal funding from the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up “land grant colleges” that specialized in agriculture and engineering. If you think that education is the equivalent of welfare, we are wasting time in discussion. Absurd doesn’t get it.

[353FMG]

I should also tell you that the $2400 bought me the cheapest type — 6-cyl, 4-speed, NO air-cond. A V-8 was too rich for my blood.

My down payment was a whopping $200. Man, I was going hungry for a while just to tool around in a Mustang in it’s first production year. It vied with the Plymouth Barracuda fastback.

This model was known as the “Secretary’s delight”.

[raybbr]

If you think that education is the equivalent of welfare, we are wasting time in discussion. Absurd doesn’t get it.

LOL Go ahead make things up. I don't think they are the same thing but in today's world the govt. subsidies of college education (which is what we are talking about on this thread) is why they cost so much. If you can't see that the I can only believe that you are somehow involved in public education and benefit from the govt subsidies.

Each state used federal funding from the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Acts of 1862 and 1890 to set up “land grant colleges” that specialized in agriculture and engineering.

Did it stop there? No! Now we have grants and subsidies to all colleges except the truly private ones.

Do you think that we have benefited from federal money running colleges?

[Wyatt's Torch]

Cheap, government backed debt fueled inflation.

See the housing market circa 2008 to see how this ends.

[Loud Mime]

fyi ping - - some great feedback here.

[Neoliberalnot]

Yes, education benefits as it should. This is one area that is useful to the entire country, not a selected few. Education teaches people to fish for themselves, to contribute to society, and to help carry the load.

Which “truly private ones” don’t get grants and subsidies?

No, federal money should not run education—but supporting education is a worthy use of tax dollars.

Perhaps all subsidies should be eliminated. Are you on board?