<p>^lol</p>
<p>One thing this discussion of costs is missing is the ever important aspect of what another poster on these threads calls the edifice complex.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s quite as simple as supply and demand alone and a case of price-fixing per se – directly, that is. I think that the consumers in part generate the inflated costs with the expectation of low teacher-pupil ratios, gleaming facilities, a host of non-essential services and opportunities, etc. </p>
<p>By way of example, a century ago or so, I attended university in Canada, where tuition today remains lower than most in-state flagships. In terms of educational quality, several Canadian u’s rank in the top 100 by world metrics. But the federal govt is picking up a very large share of the tab, and there are some things you just don’t generally expect – eg small classes and myriad study abroad programs and amenity-rich residences, etc.</p>
<p>I think the thing that frustrates so many parents of OOS students is the fact phenom of in-state/out-of-state fees. But that’s what you get when you have a country both founded on state rights and a free market preference – elite private institutions generally unaffordable to many, or flagships that attract OOS students offering the kind of amenities of the privates, or the devil-you-know instate, which may well be a fine institution but doesn’t have the funding to mimic the private amenities.
And even pooled federal funding instead of state-by state funding wouldn’t equalize that because of the “amenity-pressure” of the privates. </p>
<p>The second cost differential between Canada and the US in terms of delivery is faculty/staff healthcare - a substantial fiscal burden in the case of the US. At the same time, as taxpayers, we aren’t spending much in terms of funding universities indirectly via universal healthcare and centralized federal funding – so boy o boy do we get the hit when we actually have to use one ;)</p>
<p>I don’t find the system fantastic in terms of what’s best for the country overall in terms of maximizing human potential, but I’d be hard pressed to find many folks on these threads willing to collectively alter their lifestyles to fund healthcare and higher Ed more robustly from the tax base either ;)</p>