Every high school student applying to colleges needs to see this.
The Baby Boomers college education was paid for by their parents’ taxes, and, in return, they only voted for politicians who cut the taxes which were supposed to pay for their kids’ college. So, whenever you hear a Baby Boomer complain that Millennials expect that everything should be paid for them, remember that Baby Boomers actually had everything paid for them.
What they forgot to add was that the number of upper administrators per student has also doubled, and the salaries of the upper administrators at Universities have also increased substantially . This also has added to the costs of running universities. Of course, this is offset somewhat by faculty salaries having stagnated, and by replacing tenured and tenure-track faculty with underpaid temporary contingent faculty.
Extensive government involvement ==> out of countrol cost structure.
Housing, medical care, education, military, government services generally…
Always the same story. Always.
@SatchelSF No, it was cutting government involvement that did it. The universities were booming, and the USA replaced Europe as the world leader in education, over the late 1940s until the 1970s, when the Government was investing heavily in Universities, from state supported public university systems to research support, to government subsidized student loans. It was only when people decided education and scientific research weren’t worth paying for, and voted to cut government support and involvement in higher education, did everything things start going south.
Countries in which the government is not involved in education are called “third world countries”.
If we take the government out of higher education, we will get a bunch of very good universities for the wealthiest Americans, while the rest will be stuck with for profit “universities”.
If you want to know what it looks like when the government does not have oversight, the for-profit “education” sector shows you exactly what it will look like. A 23% graduation rate, a 52% (and rising) rate of defaulting on student loans, and educational standards which are sub-standard, to be charitable.
The higher education system is were I spent over 20 years, and I am very familiar with the effects of government intervention, both positive and negative.
Well, @MWolf, I hope you’re wrong! Because with a structural annual deficit >$1T at the Federal level as far as the eye can see, the chance of significant real increases in education spending is basically zero. People should read the tea leaves and figure out where this is going.
(It’s not even theoretically possible for government to increase real spending any longer, at least on a sustained basis. At close to 400% debt to GDP ratio across the economy as a whole, even assuming that the average real borrowing rate could be corralled to, say, 1% on a sustained, equilibrium basis, the demand for debt service is significantly greater than long run productivity + population growth. <== sorry for the macro mumbo jumbo 
)
@SatchelSF Oh, you’re correct. Without raising taxes, the state and federal governments cannot increase their spending. So something will have to give, and I do not know which direction.
For some reason I cannot get the video to play. Is anyone willing to briefly summarize the video content ? Thank you in advance !
Once again, the consumer is left completely out of the picture. Why so many new admins? Because a college can’t survive offering a bare bones basic education. We need suite style dorms, fully staffed health offices, recreational and wellness facilities/experiences, advising centers, directors and assistant deans…
The reasons are just way more complicated than can be wrapped up neatly in an 18 minute video
Reporters always misunderstand why college tuition has soared.
@ordinarylives A student is not a consumer, because education is not a consumable product. A college provides the opportunity for education, that a student either takes advantage of or does not.
If you’re looking at students as consumers or costumers, than you’re looking at colleges as no more than four year theme parks, where you pay for “the experience”.
I was in academia for a couple of decades, and I have seen the degradation of academic standards in the name of “costumer satisfaction” by chancellors, provosts, and deans who think of academia as a business, with them as the CEOs or something.
“f you’re looking at students as consumers or costumers, than you’re looking at colleges as no more than four year theme parks, where you pay for “the experience”.”
Yes, they are consumers-and that is why the mediocre colleges are spending their money on things that are theme park or wealthy boarding camp-like-climbing walls and posh dorms-and all kinds of trappings made to excite the sensibility of the 18 year old “scholar”-not. Schools are doing that to attract wealthy full paying students-those who may not be very strong academically but are full pay and are used to a posh life style. Money on posh dorms is money not available for academic-related expenses.
@lostaccount Good points.
There are no climbing walls, lazy rivers, or posh dorms at the likes of Yale and Swarthmore (the two schools I’m very familiar with in recent years). That trope is way overused.
@lostaccount not just to attract wealthy full pay, as lots of small privates offer all students a scholarship/tuition discount of some kind, but to stay viable in an ever more competitive market for those 18 year olds.
@MWolf Education may not be a consumable good, but the people paying to attend and live on campus expect some kind of bang for the buck, and that often means services, which take admins to run and facilities to house.
Another huge expense is the cost of keeping up with tech. Think how college networks have had to expand just to keep up with the number of devices on campus, but again, no mention in the video.
Donna, the point of the trope is that Yale does not need to build a climbing wall. They can take half a billion dollars and invest it in Life Sciences; they are already the largest employer in CT, they own the land, they can build out labs for cancer and basic genetic research and create interdisciplinary centers for studying all kinds of diseases because they have a top med school, hospital, and faculty lined up around block to get hired. And they can use their clout in the arts and humanities to attract students who would not have considered Yale for some of the scientific disciplines. Oh yeah, and the dorms look like relics from the 1940’s and don’t have A/C but that’s ok because each individual dorm/college has an endowment to make sure that even kids on full financial aid can afford to take a non-paying internship during the summer, or get a travel fellowship to do research with a professor.
The third tier privates can’t compete. So for 25K they can build a climbing wall, and for 50K they can build a lazy river. And that triggers the arms race, and even the public U’s are now scrambling to keep up. And if you want full pay out of state kids at your public flagship, you need posh dorms and suite style living and sushi to get them.
The trope isn’t overused- it’s just describing a portion of the food chain which does not include Swat or Yale.
The primary reason for “How College Got So Expensive in America” was the change in the bankruptcy laws that made student loan debt almost impossible to discharge. This, in turn, allowed lenders to make large student loans without worrying about reasonableness or likelihood of payback. This allowed schools to raise tuition & fees & living costs & left many flush with cash.
How many schools have a lazy river?
The primary reason college is so expensive is that it costs money for: regulatory compliance (privacy, financial aid, student level reporting, cybersecurity, etc), physical upkeep of (often aging) buildings and grounds, compensation and benefits for staff, rapidly changing technology, mental health needs, staffing for expanded hours required by nontraditional needs for programming, utilities, insurance, etc, etc, etc. I work at a very small college, and we are a shoestring staff - but we cannot cut back and still run programs. I see the budget, and I know that we are not wasting money. Yet tuition alone cannot keep us going - and endowments for the vast majority of schools are not huge.
The one thing I am sure of is that the argument that people can get loans or that loans cannot be dismissed in bankruptcy is not the reason schools cost so much.
@kelsmom: We can both be right. It certainly is true for law schools as well as for many undergraduate programs. But, I agree that for a very small college with a small endowment, that compliance can be an overwhelming financial responsibility.
@sschickens: Not sure how many schools have a lazy river, but, if I recall correctly, the University of Alabama does.
@Publisher Thanks. I’ve been on about 40 campuses over the past 6 years and I’ve not seen a lazy river. Nor have I seen a dorm that comes close to being ‘posh’.