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<p>I’m reading a fascinating book about the roots of the financial and housing crashes, called All the Devils Are Here. It turns out Greenspan was instrumental in creating the bubble.</p>
<p>What blossom said times a jillion. Anybody who disagrees is a smeg head.</p>
<p>No doubt that easy credit is pushing up college costs, but the other, more important reality that is almost taboo to mention on this board, is that the social demand of quasi-universal “college experience” attendance for the middle class is unsustainable. There is just not enough economic value in the proposition.</p>
<p>I find it fascinating to see how much colleges like MIT and Stanford (to name standouts) have put their curriculums online for free learning. I do not doubt the next step is fee for examination leading to diploma. The process will truly democratize undergraduate learning, but I think it will also severely contract the diploma inflation now present in the country.</p>
<p>Everybody can try, and a few will succeed.</p>
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<p>I never had this experience. Our son did but our daughter didn’t but she has another two years and very well may experience it. My opinion is that it is a luxury but it’s worthwhile if you can afford it. Colleges state that students that live in dorms have better outcomes. I don’t doubt that as the logistics are usually better. But if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it.</p>
<p>You can understand why there is reluctance to forgive college debt as the students received housing, food, books, recreation on borrowed money where a lot of people never had these things. Similar thing with the housing bubble.</p>
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<p>I’m a big fan of online education but it isn’t for everyone.</p>
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<p>That is the point.
Btw, the irony of expensive online diploma mills being replaced by rigorous, inexpensive curriculums is pretty amazing.</p>
<p>Regarding #4: people love to be outraged over how much the costs of elite higher education has risen beyond inflation. But if they were an admin at an elite university, they would know why that’s the case. The cost of faculty has risen because of increased competition for the best faculty (and money talks); the cost of maintaining the facilities has risen because money talks; the cost of everything, from undergrads to grads to whathaveyou, has risen because the demand for ‘the best’ has increased faster than supply. People who want these elite universities but whine about their cost are not realistic about the cost of running these universities.</p>
<p>The only ones for whom I don’t have this attitude toward are HYPS (MIT not included here). The jump in the growth of their endowments each year would yield a return greater than the amount that they gain from tuition increases. They would easily be able to eliminate tuition without harming themselves. But they choose to increase intuition to grow their budgets. For example, Stanford’s endowment is 40% unrestricted; it could easily bring down tuition, but instead it’s increasing it, which the provost explains away with a moral argument: should we be charging less for students who can pay? Ironically, using the explanation above on supply and demand, the answer is: yes.</p>