Why is Higher Education so expensive?

[Sombeech]

What do you think about these justifications for the cost of higher education?

[bigred72]

Sounds like one big, bloody, circle jerk.

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[BruteForce]

Anybody walk around any campus recently? Notice how luxurious the buildings are. Loads of mahogany, oak and other expensive woods. Notice how many people a campus employs? Higher Ed no longer caters to an education, they cater to an experience in opulence..

[Sombeech]

One of the biggest pet peeves I'll ever have about College costs is the price of books. Over $100 on average back when I attended, I assume the cost hasn't gone down, why would it?

And then the A$$HOLE professor is the author of the book, makes the book mandatory for class (you actually get GRADED for the purchase of the book, WTF?) and they charge whatever the hell they want for the book. What are you gonna do? No lie, I paid $150 for a "book" authored by a teacher, it wasn't a hardcover book, not a softbound book either. Not even spiral bound. It was exactly like the book in this picture, in PLASTIC RING BINDING, and single sided printing.

Corruption on campus. He wrote it, made it mandatory to pass the class, seriously you cannot pass the class if you don't buy the book, and since he's got you by the nuts, he charges whatever the hell he wants.

[phatch]

There is a push towards open curriculum, copy-right free documents assembled by educators and professionals that schools, (k-12 and college) can use and customize as needed. This is only applicable in subjects without a lot of cutting edge changing material. But it would cover the general education, and even many more foundational and even advanced classes in engineering and such.

These would be freely distributable. This would save public schools a lot of money, reduce the power of Texas in text book approval and so on.

Not a complete solution, but low cost education concepts are developing and progressing.

[Sombeech]

I agree that K-12 text books will keep going down in cost, but I don't think it's possible to mandate a policy like this at the University level. Other courses where my professor required I buy their books included English class and History. It's a shame, those college kids are getting screwed, especially ones like me who paid every dime of it myself, not from some scholarship or gift.

[dougr]

The overriding reason is this: we have unlimited government money, in the form of grants and loans, being spent on any field of study (art equal to medicine) by consumers who do not have any concept of cost or debt, and with no differentiation on what is more valuable to society. Simple recipe for overspending.

Colleges have simply lined up for the gravy train, as would any industry trying to make money.

The only solution is the complete ending of govt payments for college. Real costs vs real benefits will then have to be weighed. "Is an art degree worth $160k?" should be a critical question for a 17 year old and his-her parents. It just isn't now.

[Rob L]

Why is Higher Education so expensive?

Can we put some $$$ or £££ to the case?

My nephew & niece are both in their early 20's, doing Master degrees now, after their respective BSc's. Those cost about £9000 each year (tuition fees only...so add living costs on top. In London). These costs are being borne by bank loans and family subsidies.

I worry that civilised nations like mine are charging fees for tertiary education, when it is clever folk (like my nephew & niece) who, in the long term, will be later earning more, and therefore paying greater taxation in the future.

Surely civilised countries should be investing in their future leaders/doctors/scientists/ etc rather than potentially blocking out those who could be influential just because their family can't afford it.

/Rant off/

[dougr]

I wouldn't disagree, Rob. We can't have a prosperous society with art and communication and feminist studies (etc etc) just as valued as medicine, science, and engineering.

I'd go further than you and eliminate all govt money from the equation. It's my belief that the sobering necessity of proving the worth of a field of study, and accomplishment as each year passes, is a necessary balance to the unlimited spending when govt enters the picture.

[Scott P]

The only solution is the complete ending of govt payments for college.

That would be an incredibly stupid move from an economic standpoint. Only a few people could ever afford college if that were to happen. All private colleges I know of charge $31K to $100K per year for tuition and that doesn't include books.

I agree that we should eliminate useless degrees, but having only a few people being able to afford college would destroy the competitiveness of the United States as an economic powerhouse.

The United States is already falling behind several other countries when it comes to education.

Unless you go after a worthless degree (and many people do), college graduates add a lot more money in their lifetimes to the tax base than is subsided through higher education.

The real solution is to get rid of worthless degrees.

[Brian in SLC]

The real solution is to get rid of worthless degrees.

Is there such a thing? I don't think so. I know plenty of folks with so called worthless degrees that do pretty darn well. Its a pedigree of sorts and certainly opened a bunch more doors than not.

http://time.com/3964415/ceo-degree-liberal-arts/

[Scott P]

I know plenty of folks with so called worthless degrees that do pretty darn well.

There are plenty of people that have done well with no college as well. For those examples in the link, it doesn't mean that it was the (mostly worthless) degree itself that was the tool that helped them land the CEO job.

All degrees are not created equal.

http://www.salary.com/8-college-degr...on-investment/

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/10-wo...-earn-in-2015/

[Rob L]

I'm not sure I agree with Scott.

Education is just that.

The human race struggled in its development as did every other creature, but part of the human's historical success is that it created sufficient intelligence to allow for spare time. Through that "spare time", we became artists as well as engineers, sometimes putting the two together to construct "beautiful" buildings, things, structures, pieces of art, orchestral music, dances, etc (rather than "functional" lives as most earthly creatures still do).

It allowed us to create art (be that painting, sculpture, music, what have you).

No other creature has done this, because all the others have been very busy at just surviving. We, and we alone as a species, can do this. It might be said that the development of a society is defined by its art, developed because it has the intelligence, finance and security so to do.

If that "art" or even "science" becomes a Degree that we are not happy with, it is a continuing symptom of the same human eagerness to progress. Some will succeed, and some will fail. History might call it Progress.

[dougr]

That would be an incredibly stupid move from an economic standpoint. Only a few people could ever afford college if that were to happen.

That wouldn't be the case. Colleges need to price themselves to attract enough buyers. They'd be forced to cut costs, plain and simple. There is simply no reason to manage cost now. Regardless of how ridiculous tuition is, the govt. pays. There is no sector of the economy that has seen more obscene cost inflation than higher ed.

Unless you go after a worthless degree (and many people do), college graduates add a lot more money in their lifetimes to the tax base than is subsided through higher education.

"Useless" and "useful" degrees have been created by this govt. distortion of education. Useless and useful in quotes because it's the oversupply in degrees that is the problem, not the intrinsic value of the degree. To wit, art and music and history degree holders truly enrich society and we'd be a sad place without those fields, no argument from me, and I'm an engineering degree holder. But we only have need for so many of any field. The oversupply in "useless" degrees artificially depresses the value of each degree holder in those fields and relegates those holders to a hard road. A sad state and undeserved by those people.

So it all comes back to this: who is best positioned to decide what is valuable, and how much an education should cost? Govt and university admins, or the buyers? My answer: 1, colleges need to justify their expense by showing their product (a degree) is worth something in the future; 2, buyers need to weigh the investment cost vs potential future benefit.

Every other facet of our society operates on the principle of a cost/benefit analysis, and we have led the world in the quality of, distribution of, and availability of everything for the common man. No reason higher ed. couldn't be the same if we the people were allowed to be in charge.

[Scott P]

That wouldn't be the case. Colleges need to price themselves to attract enough buyers. They'd be forced to cut costs, plain and simple. There is simply no reason to manage cost now.

This is false. Private colleges already compete with subsidize schools and each other and they already cost $30K+ a year. If publicly funded schools weren't available as competition, there would be even less motivation to cut cost. Did you ever go to college and take economics? If very few people could afford college, then the US would fall even farther behind in the world, plain and simple.

[dougr]

[COLOR=#333333]This is false. Private colleges already compete with subsidize schools and each other and they already cost $30K+ a year.

More like 40 to 60k a year. Keep in mind funding isn't just on the back end. It's on the front end, through student loans, too. We have $1.2 trillion in outstanding loan debt. What has that gotten? Millions of kids with degrees that aren't useful, and those kids are saddled with debt, and the universities and their elite professors are living high on amazing campuses.

Scott, we're on the same side here. College and a well educated populace are critical to remaining first world. We just need someone in the loop to care about cost, and blank check govt spending doesn't allow for that.