DailyDirt: College Tuition Is Expensive

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Apr 16th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Paying for college has never exactly been easy, but it's been getting increasingly difficult over time. On top of that, it's getting more difficult to get into some of the more selective schools. CA Gov. Jerry Brown remarked that "normal" people can't get accepted to Berkeley anymore (hold the jokes on how normal the students at Berkeley have ever been, okay?). Proposals for free community college tuition (with fine print attached) might make higher education more accessible and certain colleges more socio-economically diverse, but what's going on with the costs of tuition?

All the Ivy League universities and a bunch of prestigious schools like MIT and Stanford offer free tuition for students from families earning less than specified income levels. However, if the goal of these kinds of programs is really to achieve higher socio-economic diversity of student populations, perhaps efforts to level the playing field should start far earlier than college. [url]
The putative reason for the increasing college tuition is related to slashed government funding, but the conventional wisdom seems to ignore the growth of the student population, as well as the administrative expansion which has been roughly ten times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions. Some folks point to the seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university executives as a scapegoat, but the situation seems to be much more complex. Is there a more efficient way to deliver higher education and reliably recognize student achievements? [url]
Government subsidized higher education isn't going to lower the costs of educating -- it'll just obscure the relationship between that cost and tuition. Reducing administration costs for colleges and universities seems like the place to start, but it's not clear how the cuts there would begin... or why they would be initiated by the very people who are in charge of the administration budgets. [url]

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Filed Under: college, diversity, education, higher education, ivy league, jerry brown, moocs, tuition, university

6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 16 Apr 2015 @ 5:55pm

Free eduycation is not a panacea
When I went to college I had friends whose parents couldn't afford to pay for college and they went anyway. I had friends who watched their elder siblings go through college and get advanced degrees and they made excuses why they couldn't go. I saw others who could have gone for a free ride and were too cool for school. Georgia has free public college for anyone with a B average or better and still kids can't be bothered to do it. It boils down to motivation of the kids. Either they are motivated or they or not. The motivated ones find a way, the rest make excuses. This is the same dynamic that plays out in all social programs. You can give, give, give and eventually people have to stand on their own you we need to quit giving and force them to stand on their own.
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Pixelation, 16 Apr 2015 @ 8:02pm

Seems to me you would be better off giving them the money to start a business.
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retrogamer (profile), 16 Apr 2015 @ 11:43pm

Re: Free eduycation is not a panacea
I really disagree with this, the issue is that we're pushing people into degrees from four year universities that may not yield employment and leave them saddled with debt. Not everyone has the aptitude for a free ride (If you think for a minute, a B average already means above average, which is a C if grades are administered properly). Should every C student be stuck with a HS Diploma or worthless degree that buries them in debt? Mike Rowe has been on about the need for low cost vocational education, and I think he's right. It's long, but I really agree with this interview he did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKzu86Agg0
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2015 @ 5:18am

An educated populace is more difficult to rule over and abuse, therefore the powers that be see fit to curtail the education of the masses in their ill fated attempt at world domination.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2015 @ 10:24am

It is harder for kids to get into college today because more kids want to go to college. That trend will begin to change as there are fewer kids today than there has been in the past.

Colleges are now being run as a business, so they are spending tons of money on new dorms that trend high class, cafeterias that serve actual good food and other perks to get kids to want to go there.

College sports programs have coaches making high 7 figure salaries, build multi-million dollar sports complexes, etc.

We have forgotten what college is supposed to be, a place to learn and discover what you want to do with your life.
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John Fenderson (profile), 17 Apr 2015 @ 10:50am

Re: Free eduycation is not a panacea
The reason that the concept of free education exists and is a good thing is not that it benefits the students. It's that it benefits the entire society.
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