<p>Interesting article in yesterday's NYT</p>
<p>What complete nonsense. Today the cost of undergrad and law school or medical schools can approach 500k. Many of the colleges today have far more administrators than teachers and it’s simply not in their interest to control costs when the gov’t provides so much financial aid. Then you have the very complex issue that everyone is paying a different cost for the same product and the merely well off are being forced to pay the full cost which ends up another form of progressive taxation. The current FA system provides absolutely no incentive for parents to save for college since that money will be held against the FA. Now someone will immediately say that it’s a free world and you don’t have to send your children to private schools. Now while this is technically true in reality the colleges have a monopoly on higher education and have created a union to fix the prices. Well maybe the top colleges are worth 50K but why is the cost the same for the 70th ranked school? The infusion of gov’t money has prevented any real competition because the average student only pays 1/2 the cost. In many ways it’s like the 3rd party payor system that is driving up the cost of medical care. The current system is totally unsustainable at the current rate of tuition increases. If nothing changes the cost of a private education(and the state costs are quickly catching up) in 10-15 years will approach 500k. The big unspoken problem is that most of the baby boomers haven’t saved nearly enough for their own retirements and the out of control college costs are going to compound this problem. From a societal point of view the high cost of education is also very detrimental in the long run because it discourages successful(but not rich) people from having more children. All across the first world the very low birth rate is a very big problem because the new immigrants are having the majority of the children. And in Europe this has happened despite college being almost free.</p>
<p>If you read the letters you will find that very few readers agreed with the article. The real problem now is that the undergraduate degree that costs 120-225k today rarely prepares the student for a high paying job. Instead it’s much more like a high school diploma was 60 years ago and then you go on to graduate school to learn the skills for a real job. But of course high school was free. A large part of this has been created by the educational system that has created the myth that almost everyone should go to college and then to achieve that goal the educators dramatically lowered the standards for what it takes to get a HS diploma. In many large school sytems the majority of graduates are functionally illiterate and totally unprepared for college level work.</p>
<p>As long as education credit is easy to obtain and the government puts up other taxpayers’ money to back the loans, the cost of a college education will continue to rise. There is no market insentive to provide a quality product at a lower cost.</p>
<p>Brilliantly said Say. </p>
<p>+1 squared. </p>
<p>This article is absolute nonsense. </p>
<p>It is a joke that the wealthy are forced to pay the full amount and the lower class skae by free or next to free and, in many cases, use the resources to party not get an education. </p>
<p>Say’s posts make so many good points that it shoudl be required reading to get college confidential posting rights.</p>
<p>I wonder if the authors’ study was funded by special interests that may seek to blunt the obvious fact: that college costs, adjusted for inflation, have outpaced inflation rate & pay rises. This situation is unsustainable. The argument that IT & technology expenses drive up the costs does not hold up to scrutiny. Much of the rise in college costs can be attributed to (a) higher salaries/benefits for administrators and (b) building of luxurious facilities that have very little to do with student centered instruction.</p>
<pre><code> The ROI for US based college graduates has until recently been quite favorable. With increased globalization and the use of information technology, US college graduates are beginning to be increasingly at a disadvantage as compared to people educated (undergraduates) in Europe or Asia; the cost of higher education in those parts of the world is a fraction of the US cost. It will be difficult to prevent wage arbitrage under free trade. Therefore, in global context, investments in R&D, piloting of ideas and setting up of innovation centers will tend shift to countries that have highly skilled personnel who can be hired at far competitive (lower) costs. Global businesses now have access to these highly skilled & talented human resources.
To answer the question: If the education is overpriced, then how come more foreigners are choosing to study at colleges in the US? The answer is simple: Only the financial elites from foreign countries can afford to attend our undergraduate institutions; they (the elites) form a very small % of their countries' high school population. In the longer term, the current business model of runaway costs in higher education in the US is unsustainable. It will be detrimental to the US economy and will negatively impact all of us, despite the contrary information peddled by the authors of the study.
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<p>Here is the report to read and it is shocking. The higher educational system in the US is a scam that encourages hundreds of thousands of students to go into debt all the while knowing that many of these students will never graduate and are unsuited for college work. The purpose of the scam is to artificially inflate the cost of college and prevent any competition between the schools on price. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.aei.org/docLib/Diplomas%20and%20Dropouts%20final.pdf[/url]”>http://www.aei.org/docLib/Diplomas%20and%20Dropouts%20final.pdf</a></p>
<p>If the authors conclude that college costs have not exploded by comparing college costs to medical or legal expenditures, as Stanley Fish implies they did, then I rest my case.</p>
<p>How about comparing college costs against the cost of computer CPU cycles or memory bytes per dollar, or phone call cents per minute? Now we are talking!</p>
<p>I find the fact that college tuition is rising at a rate well-above inflation disturbing. It indicates that we may soon find ourselves with a genuine college cost crisis. However, I don’t think we are there yet.</p>
<p>I looked at all public universities with a Carnegie classification of very high research activity. Because 14 states do not have such a university, I also added the state flagship in each of these states for a total of 78 institutions. The average in-district price for tuition and fees was $7,968. I personally feel that this is a fairly reasonable price for a year of instruction. Of course, it is harder for those of us who live in states with weak flagships (I’m in one of the 14) or with unusually prohibitive public fees (PA, VT, NH, IL, etc.). But I think it is a bit early to declare a “cost crisis”.</p>
<p>As I community college teacher I would like to say that the college myth may be scamming the individual student, it is not scamming society.</p>
<p>My students definitely learn, and they learn things that make them more thoughtful citizens which is a benefit to society as a whole.</p>
<p>Perhaps if they emerged from high school really educated, as our parents’ generation did, college would be a scam.</p>
<p>As it is now, they arrive not really being able to write or reason and they emerge much better able to write and think.</p>
<p>It may be that the sheer amount of knowledge has exploded so completed that high school does not provide a platform for communicating it all.</p>
<p>The decline in reading, particularly the Bible (I am not religious, but the King James Bible is a beautiful work), has resulted in students who do need college just to gain greater literacy.</p>
<p>noimagination I would urge you to check out the cost of law school and med school at the University Of CA the flagship school you describe. The tuition is rapidly approaching the cost of private schools and with the massive state deficit the undergrad costs are exploding rapidly. But you are correct that the immediate crisis is in the private schools but that is still a big problem. </p>
<p>Mythmom I would ask you to compare the graduation rates and test scores between North Dakota and California. The high school system in America is terribly broken and CC offers no real solution to this crisis. If you go back and look at the attachment in my previous post you will see that over 40% of college freshman never graduate and it’s much worse for some groups. Moreover the graduation rates includes degrees from schools so weak that the degrees have little value in the market place.</p>
<p>noimagination- Here is the tuition hikes planned for Boalt in the next few years up to over 50k for in-state residents. Almost all the big states are broke from the cost of the public union pensions and will follow suit. This is soon going to be a crisis in the state schools. </p>
<p>[Boalt’s</a> tuition next year. 66,000+ IN STATE, 74000 OOS](<a href=“Boalt's tuition next year. 66,000+ IN STATE, 74000 OOS Forum - Top Law Schools”>Boalt's tuition next year. 66,000+ IN STATE, 74000 OOS Forum - Top Law Schools)</p>
<p>Here are timely articles making the same points. If you read the letters that follow many ignore the harsh reality that for a college degree to mean something it must be rigorous enough to exclude the average students. But many people of certain ideologies are unwilling to accept this obvious fact because a greater percentage of the high acheiving students come from higher socioeconomic groups. But rightly or wrongly every honest person knows this is true. </p>
<p>[Fergus</a> Cullen: The five-year party – Is college worth it? - Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010](<a href=“http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Fergus+Cullen%3A+The+five-year+party+--+Is+college+worth+it%3F&articleId=1ac110cb-a943-4df4-a964-5fdd8d6d57ed]Fergus”>http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Fergus+Cullen%3A+The+five-year+party+--+Is+college+worth+it%3F&articleId=1ac110cb-a943-4df4-a964-5fdd8d6d57ed)</p>
<p>And this from the LA Times.</p>
<p>[Making</a> California college’s cost more would benefit California - latimes.com](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-svorny-college-funding-20101122,0,6554772.story]Making”>Make college cost more)</p>
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<p>Actually, Say’s arguments start out wrong when s/he includes the costs of professional schools in his/her first post. The Say switches gears and focuses on undergrad at only private colleges. which can cost a lot. But no where does Say discuss publics, which cost a whole lot less. Heck, some public Unis are even “free” with good grades/test scores.</p>
<p>bluebayou it’s true that the public schools cost less but with all the massive state budget deficits, huge costs increases are on the way. I included the cost increases at UC just to make this point. The point that is made in one of the articles is that gov’t FA money rather than helping, has actually made the system worse by subsidizing the college costs of marginal students all the whille allowing the top schools to increase tuition far above inflation. There is simply no need for probably half of the colleges in the country since they have an open admission standard and graduate well under 50% of the students. Tell me another non-government business that could operate with such poor results. But instead the corrupt educational system keeps telling marginal students that their best option for the future is a dumbed down college degree that has has little value despite the fact that well over 50% of these students will never graduate. My point in the previous posts is that a college degree now functions much like the HS degree from 60-70 years ago except that it costs big dollars. The reason I included the discussion of graduate school is because a large percentage of students from the top schools now go on to get advanced degrees so that cost is quite relevant. The whole point here is really whether wasting all this money on inflated college costs for so many marginal students makes any sense both for the students and the country. The country and the students would be far better served if that money was instead used to teach them a skill useful in the job market. But the whole problem starts because there is absolutely no competition on price and quality in the college system.</p>
<p>I keep reading that my parents generation came out of high school really educated and perpared for the workforce. Well, my father went straight from high school to the Battle of the Bulge, and my mother worked in the telephone office. From there, he spent his life in construction and she became the postmaster of a small town. What they learned in high school was enough for both of these jobs. Today, the postal service would not think of hiring a postmaster without a colege degree.
But what my parents learned in high school was NOT superior to what I learned or my son is learning. My parents didn’t not have calculus offered in school. They had no options for honors classes, economics, psychology, multiple foreign languages, etc. They did, however, have cooking, sewing, building trades, welding, etc. so that they were employable (or prepared for the home) upon graduation. I argue that high school prepares students for college (if they actually take the college prep courses) and that most of the jobs that pay well require those skills. We, as a nation, have turned our back on solid vacational education, though part of it is because we have learned through multiple recessions/job cycles that a worker that can’t think/adapt is an unemployed worker. When this country figures out what it wants to be (manufacturing, technology, service, etc), the educational system will respond accordingly.</p>
<p>MizzBee I completely agree with you that many HS are more like junior colleges teaching advanced courses. So what we have is a large percentage of colleges teaching remedial HS work and a smaller number of HS teaching college level work. This is precisely what’s going on in America because the educational elite refuses to separate the students based on ability as is done in virtually every other advanced country in the world. In Japan,Sweden, Finland etc. the students take a test in around 9th grade and the top scorers go on the college prep and the others learn a trade. Only in America does the educational system pretend that poor students will be helped by going to college. Why do they do it? Because more students feeds the educational bureaucracy, creates more teachinf jobs. and prevents price competition between colleges. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.quickanded.com/2008/12/lessons-from-finland.html]Finlandia[/url”>http://www.quickanded.com/2008/12/lessons-from-finland.html]Finlandia[/url</a>]</p>
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<p>How can the country dictates what it wants from its education system? The students who will enter the workforce in fifteen years are already in the system. Fifteen is a lifetime for most industries. Just imagine of your world is different in 2010 from what it was in 1995, especially when it comes to technology.</p>
<p>What has barely changed is that our “system” still fails to educate our next generations of plumbers, mechanics, bricklayers, etc. Our system believes that the students who do not the ability of desire to attend an institution of higher learning is better off dropping out and finding a place where they can learn on the job. This why our construction and manufactuing industries are so dismal. </p>
<p>We do indeed find models of early selection of students very un-american. We believe in democracy, and thus prefer to fail almost everyone, safe and except the students wealthy enough to engage in direct or veiled school choice, namely by being able to move into one of the Shangri-La communities where public education is country club like or simply pay for private education? We do indeed prefer a system of overall mediocrity over having to admit that differences in ability do indeed exist.</p>
<p>The problem is that very few people know the actual educational statistics and even less are willing to discuss it. The educational bureaucracy is really functioning more like a public union that simply wants to increase the spending(number of students in the system) rather than getting the most for the country from educational spending.</p>
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<p>And you used a BAD data point, IMO, which therefore doesn’t support your position at all; again, you have confused professional school costs with undergrad costs. The cost to attend Boalt is irrelevant to attending a UC, which is essentially free for the "middle class (by definition, income of$55k).</p>
<p>btw: I have no problem with the UCs jacking up Law School prices. (Anything that inhibits the production of more attorneys is good for society, IMO.)</p>
<p>1) We have a massive surplus of lawyers in California and the US.
2) We have a massive surplus of under-employed lawyers in California and the US.
3) We have a massive number of JD’s not working in the legal field because they can’t find legal work.
4) Current graduates of Boalt can roll into jobs starting @ $160k, however. Why should tax payers support them?</p>
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<p>Perhaps, but the fact is that the article is not about grad school. It’s about the costs of obtaining an undergraduate college education.</p>
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<p>Now you argument has switched to non-college. What is it? Grad school, undergrad or trade school?</p>