The Tuition Debate

<p>No matter how anybody veiws education it is a service offered at the market which is getting purchased at the market. There is no way around it, unless you hire all volunteer sources (including everything, like buildings, lab equipment, paying taxes for these real estate), so unless there is NO COST of providing education (which agian is going against econ101 “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, because even free services have an opportunity cost associated with them), so unless you find the way of cost free education, yes, it is a service (sorry, it is not a product) that somebody else is buying on the market.<br>
Again, theories that “money grows on trees” and “there is a way to have a free lunch” are faulty, not true, and cannot be used for any discussion, well, maybe “logc free” discussion will do in this case, but even that has to assume that econ101 is wrong (then, the big question is why Econ.majors are paying for their “faulty” education at all)l. For god sake, if we attach the costs to raising kids, which makes “raising kids” a service that we consume as a part of our lives (why else anybody would attach a cost to such a sacred thing as raising kids), we definintely in no way can neglect that education is a service that we are buying on the market and there is a cost accosiated with it and it is real, since imaginary money that grows on the trees do not exist despite of all propaganda otherwise, we use ONLY real money taken straight out of our pockets and NOT THE GOVERNMENT MONEY (government money tree does not exist, sorry to all believers)</p>

<p>@PurpleTitan Yes, I was :)</p>

<p>The whole system for determining who gets FA is totally mucked up. On another thread, there was a kid asking for advice on when he should liquidate his trust fund holdings so that his assets won’t decrease his chance for FA… </p>

<p>If the avg price COA is X, then just charge everyone X and stop playing games.</p>

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<p>The problem is that that higher education is an economic behemoth. Colleges employ millions. Any changes will need to be phased in over a decade or more.</p>

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<p>Huge government spending categories like Medicare are theoretically the same product for all (if you live long enough), as are military defense and management of foreign relations. So is the stable political, social, and economic environment (as opposed to a civil war or totalitarian state or other undesirable governmental situation) within the jurisdiction.</p>

<p>@PurpleTitan It’s beyond me why more students don’t apply there. It’s an amazing school. It isn’t ranked high in the USNWR rankings, but if it magically decided to accept 20% of students, it would probably shoot 60 places up the rankings.</p>

<p>“The whole system for determining who gets FA is totally mucked up. On another thread, there was a kid asking for advice on when he should liquidate his trust fund holdings so that his assets won’t decrease his chance for FA…”
-Well, if this kid is a top caliber student, he does not need to liquidate anything, there are tons of Merit awards, some are using public funds (to attract top kids to public schools), most are using privately donated funds (my own D. had about 10 of them for cover her full UG tuition at in-state public UG and is planning to help others when she could). “Need based” is pretty unreliable source unless a family has plans to stay very low income (there are some families that do, but many strive to get ahead and if income goes up, then I wonder what happens to “need based” FA)
And this will not work very well “If the avg price COA is X, then just charge everyone X and stop playing games.”, In this case what do you do with literally millions of privately donated scholarships (that at D’s UG way way outweigh any public funds, many folds more). People are grateful, they want to support the causes that are important to them. Are you going to refuse this money, send them away? Would not it be S-t-u-p-i-d? This money are used to attract many top kids who otherwise would attend Elite college to in-state publics (and privates). These kids make huge difference in the rest of student body, they do actually job for free because (as D. said), they figure out that expaling material to others make them better absorb it, so they are getting paid back in services right when they present it to others who have difficulties in some classes. Everybody knows this system and neglect it would not be very smart at all.</p>

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<p>While it is true for most people, there is absolutely no question that it (not going to a super
elite undergrad college and law school) would hurt you if you wanted to be a
prestigious lawyer on the supreme court. EVERY current and retired Supreme
Court justice went to the most prestigious schools for BOTH undergraduate and law
school (except for Clarence Thomas who went to an excellent LAC undergrad, Holy Cross
instead of to an Ivy). Undergrad and law degrees for current and retired Supreme Court
justices are all from the super-elites: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Oxford etc.
See <a href=“Current Members”>http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>And the recent research from Vanderbilt, quoted in this thread,
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1678668-why-you-can-t-catch-up-new-york-times-education-life-article-p1.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1678668-why-you-can-t-catch-up-new-york-times-education-life-article-p1.html&lt;/a&gt; indicates that there are other areas where elite education
has significant long term value (albeit this applies to a small percentage of students and
careers and more followup research is needed).</p>

<p>On the other hand, that doesn’t mean it is “fixable.” That an Ivy league education helps
a subset of lawyers is not in doubt, but for the government to “fix it” may be bad, if
the solution could cause different problems and unintended consequences.
The number of students disadvantaged by the lack of Ivy league education is relatively small.
When we can’t even get top 7% kids through the state flagship school on time - there are
bigger problems to address than worrying about Ivy league tuition.</p>

<h1>106 I don’t think scholarships raise the price of tuition since they are only available to a small subset of students.</h1>

<p>@Miami, colleges now are deliberately raising the tuition to squeeze money out of fullpays to transfer it to FA recipients. Colleges can continue to award scholarship money from directed endowments, and just level out the base price tuition.</p>

<p>@blossom, what about all of the overcompensated administrators who aren’t worth their salary? There are tons of them who don’t do much of anything. My Dad talks about them all the time. He thinks the tuition situation is outrageous too. There is a ton of inefficiency that occurs at many universities that isn’t even related to what I have mentioned. There are a lot of very messed up things going on behind closed doors. My Dad’s worked at this place for 20 years. He a ton of colleagues at the most prestigious places in the world. </p>

<p>In addition to this, about all of the fundraising these places do? The president of Penn had a celebration after the university raised 4 BILLION dollars. Where is that going, the endowment?</p>

<p>Oh and your comment about lemonade stands doesn’t cover all of the parties that probably cost a lot more.</p>

<p>You come across as incredibly condescending and that is totally uncalled for.</p>

<p>Colleges have, for better or worse, the same economic/business model as airlines. Their costs are fixed. The product they sell (a seat on a flight or in the freshman class) has a fixed expiration date. They try to fill all the seats up before they expire for the maximum aggregate revenue. Each seat (except for first class) is the identical product/service. But every customer pays a different price for the fungible seat they occupy. It’s called “price discrimination” or “variable pricing.”</p>

<p>Airlines have frequent flyer miles, refundable/non-refundable tickets, 30 day advance purchase, etc. etc. etc. Universities have in-state, out-of-state tuition, merit aid, need-based financial aid, full payors of various stripes.</p>

<p>My kid goes to a state flagship which has an in-state COA of $25k-30k. That’s among the highest in-state rates in the country. The OOS COA is about $45k, which is not that bad. Result – the school is 45% OOS enrollment. My kid’s room mate is a full payor kid from South America. That’s who the school targets, not my kid who full pays at $25k.</p>

<p>Our other state U has an in-state COA of only $17k and is 80% in-state enrollment. That school’s model is to target my kid, who they would LOVE to have as a full payor at $17k.</p>

<p>Schools are free to have whatever model they can get to work for them. Parents are free to shop around for a school that is a fit financially and otherwise. Morality has nothing to do with it. </p>

<p>The sticker prices of colleges are so high because (i) they get a lot of govt support which facilitates raising prices and (ii) the very high sticker price then allows for very large price discounting (other wise known as scholarships and financial aid). My other kid goes to a private college where the sticker price is $60k (yikes!), but only 25% of the students are full payors. Everyone gets a deal!! </p>

<p>Why is it when we talk about access to higher education we restrict ourselves to talking about the Ivy League? Only .4 percent of undergraduates attend the Ivy League.
The Ivy League is not a proxy for higher education in general.<br>
Really, how much of our total public money (grants and loans) is actually going to Ivy League students.</p>

<p>Since colleges won’t lower tuitions because people complain, families living in <em>today’s</em> world need to decide what to do. It’s not always clear cut as to how much you can pay for college. The reality is that except the very rich and very poor, barely any family would feel “comfortable” paying for elite privates or OOS publics but a family can decide how much they really want to “stretch” to help their kids in college. I think that there will always be families that believe in education in elite schools and are willing to pay the premium (not without complaints and struggles), and it may be the right choice for them. Since elite schools are usually small, I don’t see them to be in panic for lacking enough applicants any time soon. On the other hand, we may reach a point soon when public opinions trigger the politicians to ask colleges questions about the constant tuition hikes, just as last time around they threatened to take away their non-profit status if they don’t stop accumulating their huge endowments by doing “nothing” with them, which forced them to start the current financial aid programs to increase access, which some of us are complaining about now. </p>

<p>“Why is it when we talk about access to higher education we restrict ourselves to talking about the Ivy League? Only .4 percent of undergraduates attend the Ivy League. The Ivy League is not a proxy for higher education in general.”</p>

<p>The aggregate Ivy League undergrad enrollment is the same size as Arizona State’s undergrad enrollment. Higher education overwhelmingly happens at state U’s, community colleges, and non-swanky private colleges. </p>

<p>@2018RiceParent‌ :</p>

<p>I think that you have to make a distinction between undergrad and some grad schools. For most career goals (outside of a few select industries), undergrad prestige doesn’t matter that much (I’m not counting the Supreme Court). For most jobs that MBAs and JDs aspire to, what school you go to matters a pretty big deal. You’ve noted that even those folks who went to a good private for grad school but a state school for undergrad may be underprepared. My response would be that publics are more laissez-faire/sink-or-swim with less handholding. The resources are there for a bright kid to get an amazing education and grad school preparation as good as any at an elite private. But they would have to be proactive and internally motivated. If they just follow the sheep, they may not do as well. Certainly, slacker-types who just do the bare minimum required won’t do as well post-graduation if they went to state school compared to an elite private. Hungry bright internally-motivated kids will do perfectly fine anywhere, IMO.</p>

<p>@anniebeats
A flat $25K per year tuition would be one half of the gross income of half of the families in the US (2012 median is $58K). It sounds like a good deal if you earn 3x that, I guess.</p>

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<p>That paper starts out with the assumption that top 40 private RU > top 159 private LAC > top ?? public RU > everything else, in terms of how it defines its tiers 1 through 4. Does it make sense that Syracuse is a “tier 1” school, while Amherst is a “tier 2” school, University of Virginia is a “tier 3” school, and Dartmouth is a “tier 4” school?</p>

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<p>National government student financial aid has not been increasing over the long term relative to CPI inflation, and has been declining relative to college cost inflation. State government support of state universities has been declining as states have defunded them (often in bursts during budget crises during economic downturns). So the claim of “increasing government subsidies causing increased college costs” does not hold up (although decreasing government subsidies at state universities does lead to increased costs directly to students at state universities).</p>

<p>No, it’s not direct govt support of universities that’s raising prices. It’s govt policies of making student loans accessible to everyone - this is artificially raising the buying power of the student so the schools likewise raise their prices.</p>