Rising Tuition Costs? What Can Be Done?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/campus-overload/post/one-trillion-dollars-student-loan-debt-builds-toward-yet-another-record/2011/10/19/gIQAbUoJyL_blog.html

College debt just reached 1 trillion

And its showing no signs of slowing down. And with jobs becoming harder and harder, now thousands of students are finding themselves stuck with unbelievable debt.

What can be done about this? College is still important, but its becoming to the point where the price might be too great.

Obama is making a plan to help out the debt burden which I think was a GREAT idea, but sadly I fear it wont be enough.

edited 26th Oct '11 3:34:16 PM by Thorn14

...I dunno. Government schools, I guess. Nobody wants to pay the taxes for it, though.

Well the ideal would be to socialize the cost of tertiary education and make it free to those smart enough to pass a serious entrance exam (not universal - high school used to be at least as rigorous as today's universities when it was for elites, and look at it now).

I'm not sure if that would even work as Keynesian stimulus, though. Tomu?

edited 26th Oct '11 3:39:29 PM by Rottweiler

I think community colleges are going to grow soon. You get the same education for a fraction of the cost. I'm SOOO glad Im going to one.

That stigma that its for the poor or "failures" needs to die fast.

Has it reached the point where getting a college education is the bad financial choice yet?

Studying abroad? It's much cheaper, and it's what I did.

Yeah... I'm seeing a repeat of the housing bubble burst coming soon. I think the only thing preventing it at the moment is that pesky little detail that says student loans don't disappear in bankruptcy like nearly everything else. We'd probably see graduates declare bankruptcy en masse to get rid if the debt if they could do so.

Thats up for you to decide. Is it worth the average $24,000 in debt?

edited 26th Oct '11 3:41:13 PM by Thorn14

^ How many students are enrolled in college now?

(I saw a blurb about it being almost 12 million in 2009. Using that number, I get 80-something thousand per student in debt.)

Seems I got off easy then, only 20k-ish in debt, (30k counting interest payments).

Back on topic anyway. I think the government needs to stop slashing education spending. Every time they do that the cost of running colleges just gets passed on to the students.

I'd also ask for more tax revenue to pay for stuff like this, but then I'd go deaf from people crying "OMG SOCIALISM!"

Generally, I would restrict privately-run tertiary education. Drop the stupid rules requiring private funding that raises tuition fees needlessly. The education budget from the Federal government is about right, while the State ones are rather low (I'd like to see a shift but generally try to keep per capita education spending the same across the country). Ban athletic scholarships, and move that money into purely academic scholarships.

The education per capita spending in America is perfectly fine, it's just terribly inefficient. I'd have to look closer but I'm going to guess that America's education system suffers greatly from redundancy department of redundancy and probably has like five different auditor generals per school to try to "keep costs down".

This is one of those few times I have to say that taxes don't need to be increased to solve this problem. You just need to run it via the government and run it well. Everybody else in the west spends less than USA (if you don't consider the 100% subsidized tuition fees for certain countries) on education but has much better results.

edited 26th Oct '11 4:56:26 PM by breadloaf

^ Yeah, if I wanted schooling, I'd flirt with going to another country to get it.

Here's an thought - how much of a schools budget is taken up by their athletic program, on average? Is that program running a net of zero, or is it dipping into the general fund of the school to stay running? Is having an athletic program really needed?

I don't think that the athletic programs would be running zero, I think they might actually be profitable. Don't quote me on that, I don't have numbers. I think the problem is that it causes American universities to concentrate a lot of infrastructure and resources to dealing with athletic issues rather than academic ones and pushes out spots for people who should be there (academically excellent but athletically incompetent).

More demand than supply pushes prices up. Simple as that.

That's crazy. It's education. It should not be market run.

@ pvtnum

Here's a look at coming to Canada to study. These would be the low-ball rates you pay:

http://www.schoolsincanada.com/Tuition-Fees-For-Graduate-International-Students.cfm

Unfortunately, I'd have to reloacate from Hawaii to do that. But if I moved back to Oregon, that would be slightly more feasible.

Is the rising costs due to facilities going up for more students, maybe?

@ Breadloaf. Your most expensive grad university is £1000 more dearer than most universities here.

...

Well, I know I'm moving to Montreal.

I live in Pennsylvania, which has the highest state tuition in the the USA. I freaked out for a long while and considered going to community college only because of the cost. Our governor didn't help the matter; I think that voting for politicians who care about tuition prices is a good idea. Besides that, be extremely successful in high school and lucky when applying to college.

edited 26th Oct '11 6:50:11 PM by Grain

And I'm concerned our tuition fees are beginning to price out the poor :)

Well, I think generally, universities aren't cutting costs like they are supposed to do so. The market incentives doesn't exist to reduce tuition fees, and the more expensive university is and the more you build a culture of "must have university", the more you can charge needlessly. I mean, university of waterloo (the waterloo in Canada :) ) has the largest quantum computer in the world. Cost of tuition per year for local students? Around 8000 for the most expensive faculty (engineering).

I have no idea where American universities dump their money. It can't be into anything useful.

I'm not really sure, either, actually...

As I understand it, the overhead for the schools is ridiculous, though, so maybe it all goes to paying those extraneous people?

Well, universities aren't exactly the most transparent of bodies, are they?

A question: Are universities in the US private or public?

But I'm curious as to what people. The weird thing is that public universities always do major cost cutting but private universities don't. Curious situation.

EDIT:

Many unviersities in the USA are private (like Ivy League), while some are mostly state (like State Universities). But even public universities usually have state laws that require them to source funding from private sources (including tuition fees). Some places have, for instance, a 70/30 rule for example, and require 30% of funding come from private sources. The weird thing with that is that if the government gives them more money, then they have to increase tuition fees to keep that ratio going.

edited 26th Oct '11 7:10:55 PM by breadloaf

Oh, I see. The majority of universities here (incl. Oxford and Cambridge, IIRC) are state-funded (with private donations on the side, of course), so are what you would call 'state' universities.

Our version of the Ivy League is the Russell Group; the top 19 in the UK, but they're just the best 19 - they're pretty much similar to any other university.

The schools themselves may well be blameless here. I just got a job entering data for a university dining hall. This means that I've seen that the university spends thousands of dollars a week just feeding all the students (and I'm fairly certain that food expenses are a mere fraction of the total expenses of running a university.)

Of course, the more I look at the food expenses, the more I get the feeling that the food vendors are gouging the university. Maybe it's the same for expenses in other departments.

edited 26th Oct '11 7:55:11 PM by feotakahari

Montreal why?