How does a professor know the students if there are a thousand of them in the class? Is there any value in professor students interaction?
^ The student makes the effort to know the prof and goes to office hours.
“Instead, more than three-quarters of students attend nonselective colleges, which admit at least half of their applicants.”
I don’t think this is a true statement. There is no such thing as a nonselective college anymore. There are Highly selective (Acceptance rate of <10%) and Selective (Acceptance rate between 11% and 50%). After that, maybe there are a few non-selective, but that group certainly doesn’t account for 75% of the student population in the US. Unless you count in the population of students non-degree seeking students.
I’m curious if anyone knows the amount of money that the US education system brings into the US economy on a regular basis. I suspect that our higher education system is a net exporter by a huge margin. That by itself would tell you that the quality of the US Education system is superior to the rest of the world. Or at least the market perceives it so.
Yes! One of my D’s top choices is this exact situation. If she goes this route, college will be incredibly inexpensive and she will save a ton of money for medical school. She has visited the school and really liked it. She doesn’t care that its an “economy” class environment. She cares that she really liked the people she met, liked the “feeling” she got from the place and liked that it actually attracts a very diverse student body rather than the homogonous group at most “country club” colleges. Most importantly, that it will get her where she wants to go in life.
This is a well-researched and well-written article, as one would expect from The Atlantic. The main premises:
- The cost of higher education is driven by labor costs. The price for professors’ services went up the same way as that for doctors, lawyers and accountants - correct.
- The cost of public education went up because states shirk their responsibility to finance it - correct.
- Compared to the rest of the world, US universities higher a lot of nonessential personnel (athletic staff, financial aid employees, lawyers etc.) - correct.
- Instead of one, we essentially have 50 disparate education systems with little operational standardization or uniformity, their own rules and regulations - correct.
- There is no cap on how much a university can charge its students nor any justification required for high tuition (free market - yes, but Medicare and Medicaid keep a tight lid on physicians’ payments for a good reason) - correct.
- The quality of undergraduate education is, by and large, decoupled from the price (it is not always what you pay is what you get), and it is very difficult to compare the product - correct.
Once you take emotions out of the equation, there is very little in this article that a reasonable person can dispute. Can the cost of higher education continue rising exponentially? Just ask a real estate broker who was in business before 2008 - although chances are, they are plying a different trade these days…
Open admission community colleges?
Many of the for-profit colleges?
If you include those which are not open admission but admit more than three quarters of their applicants (though a better descriptor would be “minimally selective”), there are schools like:
University of Texas - El Paso (100%)
University of Wyoming (96%)
University of Maine (91%)
University of North Dakota (82%)
University of Hawaii (81%)
University of Iowa (81%)
University of Mississippi (79%)
University of New Hampshire (79%)
University of Nevada - Reno (78%)
University of Arizona (76%)
Most of the above are state flagships; you can probably find numerous state non-flagships that admit almost all of their applicants.
Ok, but do you really think that 75% of the student population falls into those schools? What about some of the highley selective to selective state flagships? UofM, UofV, UofF, UNC, UofI, PU, PSU, Pitt, OSU, IU, PU, UofW (both of them), the entire UC system, GT, UT, etc. So maybe I was harsh on the non-selective wording, my main objection is that 3/4 of the students are in schools like UTEP. I just don’t buy it.
@brainboiler This article links to Dept of Education data showing 75% of students attend colleges with acceptance rates >50%. The article is a few years old, but has some great info and links. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/shut-up-about-harvard/
I think the other reason college is so expensive is the market bears the price. 32,000 kids applied to pay up to $78k/year at UChicago. How many to Harvard? Stanford? MIT? etc. How many would have applied if the price were $100k/year?
Price is very rarely a function of cost. Price is almost always determined by what a market will pay.
Indiana University Bloomington (78% admission rate) and Purdue University West Lafayette (59% admission rate) enroll a combined 82,000 students (64,000 undergraduates). Ivy Tech, Indiana’s public community college system, enrolls 100,000 students. Then there are all of the non-flagship minimally-selective public universities in Indiana (IUPUI, Ball State, Indiana State, Southern Indiana, the various non-flagship campuses of IU and Purdue, etc.).
In Texas, UT Austin appears to be the only public university that has an admission rate below 50%.
The flagship(s) may be the most visible state universities, but most states have far greater enrollment in minimally-selective non-flagship universities and non-selective community colleges than at the flagship(s).
@TomSrOfBoston Once again the elitist bent of CC shows. Yes Oxbridge is an exception as are other elite European schools. But for most American students looking for a less expensive alternative they are unattainable.
Going abroad is not for everyone I understand that, but for those that are willing and academically able to do so, it is an excellent and less expensive alternative than the US.
@Le Professionnel : With your first post (#24 above) on CC, you miss the point that all of these costs are rising due to a change in the US bankruptcy laws which fuel near risk free student loan lending.
Even your point #4 is incorrect–and it is tough to mess up on that point.
Are you the author of the article ? The editor ? (If so, google some articles on the cost of a law school education in the US & you should gain a more thorough understanding of the issue raised by the article in The Atlantic. Plus, it will open your eyes to the reality of the situation.)
If you are the author or editor of the article in The Atlantic, once you properly research the issue you will find that no reasonable person with any familiarity on the matter would believe the silliness that you are trying to peddle.
You should take a broader view of the issue regarding cost of a college degree in the US in order to understand the big picture.
Private lenders do not think of undergraduate student loans as “risk free” since they expect credit-worthy cosigners.
The government does offer direct student loans, but these are relatively limited for undergraduate (nowhere near the cost of the more expensive colleges), and the conceptual reason for the government accepting loan losses on these loans is that the rewards of some of the students finishing college and then getting better jobs and generating more economic activity and tax revenue outweighs the loan losses.
Of course, the situation with law school is very different in the amount of debt that a law student can (often very unwisely) take on.
@ucbalumnus : The way that the loans are executed makes them virtually risk free. Student loan lenders are protected by both bankruptcy laws & by obtaining the signature of a co-signer. No, not totally risk free, but the risk is extremely low. And this easy loan money fuels higher education inflation just as the housing market was recently fueled by easy money mortgage lending policies that led to the housing bust a decade ago.
If you want to close your eyes to reality, then that is your choice.
Law school lending is just an extreme example of easy money lending gone wild.
Public in state tuition costs are fairly reasonable when compared to the costs of the first 13 years of education.
“According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States spends $11,392 per student every year.” (k-12) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/16/the-5-states-that-spend-the-most-on-students.html
“…the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2017–2018 school year was … $9,970 for state residents at public colleges…” https://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmpl.jhtml?articleId=10064
It’s a price shock for the 3.2 million public high school graduates to be asked to pay after 13 years of free (to families) public school.
Under 8% of undergraduate student loan debt is in private loans (as opposed to government loans that have the well known limits that are far below the cost of expensive colleges). Even if such private loans were “easy money” offered in unlimited amounts (despite requiring creditworthy cosigners and other standards applied by the lenders), that amount looks too small to be the main driver of college cost inflation.
Even though student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, private lenders still have to consider loan losses, since a loan that is not paid is still a loss, even if it can still be carried on the books until the borrower dies.
A few students accumulating $100,000+ debt to attend NYU undergraduate is not representative of the whole.
@ucbalumnus: Do you have a source for the 8% figure that you cite ? Thank you in advance.
Student loan is the culprit. it also makes college build more fancy dorm and they know student can borrow more. >:)
imagine, D is not fail grade. GPA 1.8 still in probation. not everyone meant to be in college. vocational school may be another option if students are more hands on and bored with academic textbook useless knowledge. When less unqualified students stay in school, school may lower price to attract more students.
Government involvement in any market as either as a customer, a subsidy or via regulation results in significant derangement of pricing: health care and housing are prime examples but include education and military equipment --planes etc.