@MOMANDBOYSTWO it is not 2 per cent of gross income. It is a 2 per cent increase in taxes. So if you make 100k and pay 30k per year in taxes it would be an extra $600 if the 2 per cent was spread across the board. If we had less income inequality and a more progressive tax rate it might cost the 100k per year earner nothing.
The military budget is extremely bloated at 600 billion per year. If we cut 20 per cent from it we could have free public college education and 60 billion left over to fix our roads. That would be a much better use of the current taxpayer monies
@collegedad2013 Post #180 Are you sure of that 2% figure? Example, if a family earning $100K gross pays a tax rate of 30% now (random easy number), then that is $30,000 per year in taxes. So, you are saying that the gov’t would say, at the end of calculating your total taxes each year. that you should add 2% of that $30K amount? I guess my reading of previous poster was that a 2% tax RATE increase was being thrown around, which would then be 32% tax rate resulting in $32,000 owed in taxes.
Sorry that I have not researched it on my own, but maybe you do have a source for t explanation of the 2% figure? I really don’t know if you are right or wrong?
At $600 per year, that middle class family would only contribute $24,000 over a 40-year career. What is the cost of two years comm college or trade school these days? $24K would not come close to covering the cost of a regular state university for one child for four years.
I foresee more deficit spending as the population of non-tax paying citizens with multiple children continues to grow…Unless the population of people with no children grows faster and they are forced to support the rest of us…
@MOMANDBOYSTWO
Does it keep you up at night that your tax dollars pay to subsidize public transportation even though you opt to travel alone in the comfort of your private car? Or that your tax dollars pay for Pell Grants that can be applied at private colleges?
I think schools that receive public money (direct subsidies, Pell Grants, Federal Student Loans) should be subject to price controls. If the schools don’t want to be subject to price controls then, fine, don’t accept public money.
Right not, public money without strings attached is a contributing factor to the price of college tuition spiraling out of sight.
I would be curious to know how much of the military spending is put towards ROTC and the service academies. People seem to forget that the military is linked to education in many positive ways. I’m sure there is wasted money, but let’s not forget how many ways the military contributes to society.
@momandboystwo The 2 per cent was my rough approximation. It may vary slightly one way or the other. Payroll taxes and individual income taxes account for about 3 Trillion in federal tax revenue each year per documents put out by the federal government. I think total revenue is around 4 trillion. Two per cent of the 3 trillion is the 60 billion. That doesn’t include state taxes or estate taxes or corporate taxes going up.
The tax rate going from 30 to 32 percent is almost a 7 per cent gross increase which would mean they would raise 210 billion dollars roughly
@PrimeMeridian Post #182 I use and pay for public transportation with my taxes and my cash, so, no, I don’t lose sleep about that at all. Pell Grants at private colleges do not keep me up at night either, because I know quite a few special kids who have benefited from them at both private and public colleges. I am happy that they are available for the poorest in our country.
@NeoDymium Post #176 - I certainly do not want anyone’s heart to bleed for me. I don’t think like a victim. I just try to be practical. I think you have missed my points all along. I had hoped to show that college can be done in different ways. Those who are in great need should be taken care of. The rest of us should buckle down, work, and save.
@albert69 Post #183 - I think you are correct. There is likely waste throughout every government program. There is also fraud in these government entitlements. I personally have met quite a few people who cheat to maximize their government benefits and minimize the income they report to the IRS. They get paid only in cash to hide their true income and pay less in taxes. They hide cash overseas to pay less in taxes and qualify for college fin aid. They ensure that they don’t earn more than XX dollars each week at work so they can still qualify for food stamps, low-income housing, Medicaid, and any other benefits they can get. There are people who steal and/or spend all of their money on drugs and get benefits. There are doctors who charge for services that a patient doesn’t need so that they can get Medicare payments. There is waste on both sides, government and citizens, unfortunately.
@collegedad13 Post #184 - Thanks for trying to explain the numbers.
Okay, but there are people paying in taxes who don’t use public transportation. Is tax funding acceptable if and only if you, personally, are using the service?
@NeoDymium Seems to me your analysis is extremely simplified. A lot of long term spending on state university campuses has been for educational buildings. What do you do with those in terms of cost recovery for those projects? How about student unions? Are there other uses for those facilities outside the university setting? How many people outside the university setting live close enough to create sufficient demand to offset costs for any given university facility such as student unions, libraries, exercise facilities, meeting rooms, etc? And unless you are charging use fees (at amounts sufficient to support those facilities), public tax dollars will be necessary to support them. So any cost savings to the universities are at least in part erased with tax increases to publicly support those facilities. And any losses to universities must be covered by tax dollars and/or other public spending cuts as well.
On what basis do you believe operating costs would be a few thousand dollars?
I agree that we need to find ways to help control costs. Biggest concern that I have is that disconnecting the consumer of a service (here college education) from the person paying for it will increase demand and put upward pressure on prices. So absent some incentives to control costs, “free” college to all (or any large group of people) will almost certainly lead to further increased college costs.
Price controls do not have a huge history of success. Not sure what about college would necessarily lead to a difficult outcome. And if we put price controls in place (either at today’s levels or at some level below that which exists today – with some limited level of growth), fast forward 10-20 years. What will those price controlled colleges look like compared to other public universities (not “free” and thus subject to price controls) and private colleges? What kids will be studying there? What will the faculty look like? What employers will recruit there?
@usualhopeful#186 Simple answer: Yes. Willing to pay taxes for public transport, whether I use it or not.
Public transportation is necessary for some people to get to/from WORK, grocery store, doctor, etc. For others it is nice to have as backup. Happy to pay, as long as people actually use it and buses/subway trains don’t drive around empty.
Back on topic: College is already free for many. Happy to pay those existing taxes for fin aid, Pell Grants, etc for those in need. Just need to stop at FREE for ALL. I have used public transportation as a choice, not by necessity. There are many taxpayers like me - and those people can find a way to pay for their own college. We just don’t need “free” public college for all.
^That’s another budget snarl - think there has to be an exception for profiitable athletic programs. Last year, over $9M poured from Bama’s football team into academic funding. How else could they award so much merit aid?
Not sure how many of the SEC athletic programs make a profit but at least some do. Same is true for other athletic programs in other conferences. Some even make a profit if you take into account expenses for club teams and intramural sports. And they hire tutors for athletes (who are typically students) so they provide that benefit. Some donate to academic programs.
As I’ve said before, I don’t have a full cabinet of advisors to give you a less simplified answer and there is no illusion that this is a simple problem to fix. The universities would certainly lose money in the short term if they lose access to the tuition money. In the long term they will have to adapt to more stringent controls on spending.
A tentative plan that I think would be a good way to start would go something like:
Reel in the for-profit private schools, which have been proven to be rotten for educational value. This is the least politically controversial action and the easiest way to save 50% of student debt defaults and many millions of wasted GI Bill dollars. A lot of them should go out of business because they aren’t real schools and they would not be hard to replace by pushing more students into other programs.
Private nonprofits are the most expensive, but it’s also people’s right to go to them, but not necessarily on federal aid dollars. Ensure that high school juniors are taught about the expenses of state vs. private, the dangers of student debt, and when they should and shouldn’t go to private schools. Gradually drive down the amount of federal money used to pay tuition at those schools until it matches what the average state school is paid for in tuition dollars.This last step will perhaps do something to quell the fears of people worried that if they go to a private school, their tax contributions will be completely wasted.
Over the course of 10 years, downsize state universities as previously specified. They are the least problematic of the three - public nonprofit, private nonprofit, and private for-profit - so this can be done gradually. Over the course of those years, gradually reduce tuition rates as the university decreases operating costs. This would probably have to be accompanied with a tightening of admissions standards at most schools to divert less talented students (who didn’t belong in university in the first place) into inherently less expensive institutions. As far as I’ve seen, community colleges and trade schools are generally reasonably capable of increasing their student capacity without too much pain. They could probably expand their offerings into more involved almost-Bachelors level programs that, in conjunction with employer input, would make graduates very marketable.
Transition from the current funding model into one where universities are paid tuition by the government with tax money. That will require a mild to moderate increase of the tax rate.
On average over all students who attend institutions of higher learning, this is not very unlikely. Current costs at public universities, with all the waste mentioned, are about $15k per student per year. Community colleges and trade schools are much cheaper. Specialized schools - medical school (don’t think this will go below $25k/studentyear ever; MD profs are pricey), flight school (aircraft alone cost $55k/studentyear), many specialized “practicum” curricula, etc. - will always be expensive but will be rare enough that they won’t significantly distort average annual education costs.
We could, roughly, categorize college-bound students into three groups:
Those who want to get a well-paying job with an education at a beyond high school level.
Those who want to do advanced applied work in their field.
Those who want to do research in their field.
Which maps, roughly, as 1-> Bachelors, trade school, vocational school, etc.; 2-> Masters, MD, JD, etc.; 3-> PhD, MD/PhD, other research degrees. 2 and 3 require significantly more resources than 1, so students who are generally only interested in 1 should be gradually moved towards cheaper programs that are more suited to catering to those requirements. Universities should continue to cover 2 and 3 and some reduced amounts of 1. The reduced headcount within universities will also mean that costs can be higher than average for universities without pulling up the average cost of education. I think we can all agree that there are many students in universities that have no place being there, and I think there will be few tears shed if they were simply not to go to school there.
The biggest “cost” of attendance at a university is not tuition price, but opportunity costs. Spending 4-6 years in college for a Bachelors is a significant sum of money you won’t be earning in the meantime. So the price-demand response will be smaller than one would assume by looking just at tuition price changes.
It is true that in a purely market-driven response, more demand will lead to a higher price. The issue is that education as a whole is what we could describe as a market failure. The point of a market is to maximize profits, which in a lot of cases does coincide with the goal of maximizing welfare for all. However in the case of education (and medicine) it doesn’t - there is a perverse incentive to provide that from a purely economic standpoint. This is when large-scale government involvement makes a whole lot of sense.
If you want something that definitely does lead to price overruns, look no further than the federal student aid system. Easy student loans, coupled with no price controls, means that it’s easier to come up with the cash for college, without doing anything to limit prices.
Education and medicine are two of the few large-scale enterprises that are done better by direct government control than by any market system. This is because the market incentives and the public well-being incentives do not align for those two programs. Strict price controls alone would probably not be a good idea (too many of those can lead to a “pay the lowest bidder” approach that will damage educational outcomes) but an indirect limit on allowable operational expenditures would be reasonable. More specifics than that would take a cabinet of economic advisors to work out the details.
(continuing from last post which reached the length limit) @saillakeerie
As for worries about faculty and student quality… see my previous discussion on average vs. specific costs. Part of government-funded education necessarily requires stricter standards for admissions. Better students might be more expensive because on average it takes longer to give them the education level they are looking for, but if the average student costs less to educate it won’t be a problem.
I had a great study done by UC Berkeley that proved my point very well, that I have linked to in the past, but I cannot seem to find it right now. So I’ll have to give you a slightly less detailed and more simplistic source that does basically have the same conclusions but with only a fraction of the details: http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/university-budgets-where-your-fees-go
Biggest expenditures: salary (especially for maintenance staff for university infrastructure), physical maintenance (again, for that infrastructure), and research/teaching/scholarships. This also doesn’t cover alumni donations (which the Berkeley article did), which often pay for the expansion of that infrastructure to be built in the first place. Problem is that infrastructure has to be maintained and that’s not done by donations but by tuition money. So removing unnecessary infrastructure is the issue.
I don’t actually blame public universities all that much for this to be perfectly honest. The money was available to them so they found ways to spend it on projects that are useful, if not critical. But it’s time to reel back those costs and so that will require some downsizing.
Not cut, but decoupled from tuition money. I somehow think that if anyone can manage to make do without tuition money, it will be the athletic programs.
In fact I think they already do manage that to a large extent, subsiding off of game attendance, athletic passes, etc. There are many willing watchers of college sports, both among students and the general populace.
Schools aren’t going to drop athletics, whether they make a profit on them or not. It just isn’t going to happen. Some schools over the years have decided to drop a sport or two, but most are adding sports. About 6 years ago, Cal dropped 5 sports and there was such an uproar that they quickly changed that plan and I’m not sure if any were dropped. One of the UA (Birmingham? Huntsville?) dropped football last year and it was immediately reinstated. The students at UCSC just voted to retain the sports programs and raise student fees to support them. Sports aren’t going anywhere but up in number of teams, number of athletes.
Americans are not going to adopt the ‘lean and mean’ college prototype of Germany or other nations. We like our frills. We like dorms and sports and student clubs. We like having a lot of choices of majors, including Sports Management and African American Studies and ‘design your own major’. We love our gourmet dining halls and lazy rivers and 3 day orientation sessions. Some dorms allow pets and have cleaning services and free laundry service.