"Kamenetz's plan doesn't lack for details. An as-yet unpublished appendix lays out exactly where spending at Cohort Colleges and Adult Online Us would go, down to the instructor salary level. But it also would uproot thousands of workers in the higher ed sector and radically change the careers of those who remained. Kamenetz acknowledges the concern, but thinks reform is too important to not do something drastic.
"'I recognize the political pain involved, but the purpose of public higher ed is to educate people, not to employ them,' she e-mails. 'One of the travesties of the current system is the percentage of classes taught by low-paid adjuncts. I envision a system that might have fewer jobs, but they're better jobs.'"
And my comment on that is that this always requires political courage. To make a large government appropriations plan (and higher education is often the second or third largest budget category in a state budget) work, you have to keep your eye on the people who are supposed to be served by the program. But the people who are employed by the program will almost always be more organized to lobby for their benefit before the state legislature, especially because they can use purported benefits to students as a fig leaf for demands for more administrators and less checking of the effectiveness of how higher education is delivered.
Most of the suggestions in the article seem sound. They also sound rather radical compared to what is usually proposed to improve the bang for the buck of colleges in the United States. It will be interesting to see how much uptake there is of any of these ideas.
This -- and other similar -- ideas are great and certainly feasible.
Unfortunately, it'll never happen because there's simply too much money involved in the academic world. The people running the educational institutions, the people running the corporate world, and the people running government are all good friends and none of them want to do anything to screw over the other.
Sure, they can deprive the idea of state funding, and discriminate against it in credential-centric systems.
But ultimately, if you can manage a nearly-as-good (or in some cases, better) education, for $10K true out-of-pocket cost rather than $200K+, then eventually a lot more people will complete, and be loyal to, the $10K system than the legacy $200K+ one.
The high prices are a symptom. The cause is cheap student loans:
Since it is easy to get a loan, people will borrow as much as needed to get to the highest tier institution that will accept them. The private ones can thus increase their prices, and lure the staff with higher salaries. Now the public institutions need to level up salaries of professors and administrators, or they will leave for the private institutions.
That has been happening over the last 20 years. Remove the government guarantees for student loans and make them dischargeable in bankruptcy (that is, return their status to a normal loan, from the special status that they have now) - and all of a sudden, lenders will start caring about making reasonable loans, people will have less credit to spend on education, and the prices will go down significantly to a reasonably supported level.
(It is likely to cause an implosion of the higher-ed bubble in the US in the process. So be it - popping this bubble is long overdue)
States used to subsidize more of the operational budget for public schools than they do now, so the students were shouldering considerably less of their actual attendance costs.
Kind of a non-sensical article that conflicts with itself:
1. spend less on admins and have massive class sizes
2. spend less on sports, food, dorms, and other perks
5. cut most of the majors
vs.
3. oh, wait, another school reduced costs by spending more on personal instruction and having micro size classes because students actually graduated with less trouble - let's do that too!
4. offering more variety in learning methods actually proved successful, not less, so do that too!
People in NYC or California making $200K/year often pay >40% (getting close to 50% if you are in the $300K/year range) of their salary in taxes (33-35% federal, 8-13% state, and then there's sale tax. And estate tax) and get no reasonable-cost tuition nor reasonable-cost healthcare.
Every time this discussion comes up, US people are quick to quote federal tax rates but when I compared actual rates in NYC and CA, it seems like americans pay comparable taxes, and get nothing in return.
How does NZ fair in this respect? What's the real tax like (remember sales tax / vat), and what do you get for it?
Income tax is around 30-35% depending on income. There's a 15% GST applied at point of purchase, so you don't really notice it, and if you're a business it can be claimed back.
The NZ Government provides free student allowance (a few hundred dollars per week living allowance for your first 4? years of tertiary education, means-tested against your parents' income, not paid back) as well as interest-free student loans (for as long as you stay within the country).
I agree with all this. Just one addition - fuel is taxed quite a lot and in many places here a car is a necessity as public transport is poor. Its a bit over $2 per litre.
Edit: Property taxes are about $2k per year on an average house in Auckland. An average house is about $500k in Auckland as the New Zealand love of property makes the market rather expensive when compared to income. I'm using NZ dollars.
Alternate degree structures and modes of instruction are definitely worth exploring.
Points #1 and #5, though, would likely not go over well with current university faculty. Reshuffling of faculty roles seems much better designed by those with classroom/advising experience. And who's to judge which are similar or niche fields of study, besides departments themselves?
Taking it further, do you first two years at a community college then transfer 100% of your credits to the local state school and start there as a Junior.
Is there any data showing that the cost of college is increasing?
I know the price (i.e. tuition) is increasing, but this is due to colleges increasing tuition rates to make up for shortfalls as state budgets for higher education are cut. But I haven't seen any data showing that the costs have risen.
It's also worth noting that the #2 suggestion is mostly just an accounting trick that would increase the price to students, not decrease it. If "perks" like room and board aren't provided out of tuition, students will have to pay for that somehow anyway - they're necessities, not perks. And removing state subsidies for those things means that students will be paying even more, if you add up tuition + room + board.
I've got absolutely no data to support this, so make no mistake that this is anything other than the wildest speculation:
The feeling that's "in the air" is that what's really happened is buildup of too much management in the school systems. There seem to be far more "managers" per professor than there were before, and those managers are being paid far to much, especially in comparison to the professors doing the actual teaching.
It's pretty classic: most large-ish universities have marketing departments (or hire marketing departments), large non-educational functions and services that take up tremendous man power, overly large "cultural" aspects like sports, and many more.
The cost of educating hasn't really changed, but that's not what most universities are focused on doing anymore.
Unless there is data showing otherwise, I would argue that costs haven't changed, only the price.
The cost of providing education in 2013 at University of Washington is a little less than it was in 1990: $16,800 vs. $17,000. The difference is that in 1990, the state paid for 82%, where today it pays 29%.[2] That's where your tuition increases are coming from.
Or $0, if the sheepskin, corrected homework and grades won't matter. Audit classes at the large institution of your choice means just sitting in on whatever lectures you like. In big lecture halls, even with attendance, it's really quite simple to go unnoticed. Interactive classes JD/MBA might get dicey, but otherwise the worst that can happen is you get thrown out. BFD.
Also, Coursera, Udacity, OCW, Kahn and iTunes
Pluses of going legit:
- dorm life is a unique experience unlike any other, worth it just for that
- parties
- according to Thomas J. Stanley, college is by far the best place to meet a quality spouse
- monetize pizza [0]
- pedigree if it's a big name or hipster elite school
- paid internships
- hustle yourself into a paid ugrad research assistant gig
- connections
- meet potential cofounders
Hazards:
- alcohol spending
- textbook costs (buy used and sell them back)
- dorm food -> "freshman 30"
- all-nighters
- unpaid internships
- min wage jobs on campus
I've found that the smallest classes at my school have also been the most rewarding.
Sure you could sit in every day on my morning Thermo lecture and go unnoticed, but I've learned very little in that class that I couldn't already get out of an excellent textbook.
On the other hand Pharmacokinetics meets once a week in the professor's office. He also happens to be one of the leaders of the field. For two hours a week we get to discuss complex pharmacokinetic practices, ask open ended questions and, as he would say "learn how to learn". Museum Display Theory also meets once a week off campus with the head curator of the city art museum and today we discussed Foucault's Panopticon as it relates to museum curation.
These are things worth paying for, or as in my case, working hard enough to get financial aid for.
So true. The people I'm planning to do my startup are battle tested. We've pulled all nighters, dealt with high stress situations, and come out of it as friends. We know each others work habits, strengths and weaknesses.
All of that is going to be really important when we'll have just graduated with probably no funding.
Not all degrees can be attained by reading a book and passing a test. Chemistry, physics, medical school and others all require labs and pretty expensive equipment.
Universities are like any large organization, mission drift occurs and keeping your customers happy can means offering non-core services in a bundle.
I think the real trouble is that college is still awesome for people who can afford it. It's like anything in capitalism, whatever the people who can pay want is what happens. I read an article awhile back that discussed how one of the private schools in NYC was building new luxury student housing and sending limos to pick students up from the airport, that's about as far from these recommendations as you can get.
The point is that change isn't going to come from the elite schools, not real change. They may offer online programs and such, just dabbling really, but they have no trouble attracting wealthy students and donors, so they have no real incentive to radically change what they are doing. At best, they may tack on some extra programs under different names that just further cement the inequality in education we have in the US.
So, change needs to come from the bottom, from the small state schools and community colleges whose students are struggling to fund their educations. But state schools are on strict budgets, and small ones have small endowments. So real change won't come from there either because those institutions can't afford to make such radical changes, they literally don't have enough money. All they can do in many cases is what they've been doing in the past until they can't do that any more and then they can close up shop.
Either way, I personally have a pretty bleak view of the future of higher education in the US.
$10K Isn't too far off from what tuition for my EE degree cost in the late 80's. Even adjusted for real inflation it shouldn't be a penny more than $20K, possibly as low as about $15K today. That was of course at a state school.
The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing.
The same phenomenon is responsible for almost all bubbles in modern history. Interest rates dropped and qualification criteria got loose and house prices tripled in some areas, also rising in almost all. VC's got sloppy and we had the dot-com bubble.
The serious problem facing America today is that easy money is already flowing yet this bubble is also called "barely getting by as a nation."
The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing.
Based on my reading of Archibald and Feldman's book Why Does College Cost So Much?, that doesn't seem to be the case: their data show that Baumol's Cost Disease is the real culprit.
Even the price of state schools vary wildly these days. I graduated from a large state school in 07. In-state tuition there is now double from when I was enrolled. DOUBLE. In five years.
How I plan on getting a bachelor's degree for ~15k.
1. Go to a community college in a county that you are a resident for your two-year associates. The money I'm getting from Pell grants is paying my 18-credit hours per semester tuition right now (Roughly $120 per credit hour tuition). Books on top of that are costing me about 300 a semester (buy cheap old editions as much as possible). I've gotten scholarship money to cover that, and I'll also get Tax credit money.
2. Transfer to an in-state 4-year public university. Tuition rates will double for me during this transition, but YMMV (I'm in Maryland FYI). The hike in tuition will cost me about 7k a year for two years. Hence ~15k out of pocket for a degree.
Moral of the story: If you really want a premier education where you will be learning from those on the forefront of research, by all means spend 100k at an elite private college. If you want to be part of academia or research projects this is probably the route you have to take.
If instead you know what career you are going into and you have a desire to learn those skills on your own, then go the cheap route and just get the piece of paper to prove to HR you are worthy of a job.
*Obviously some careers might not fit this model, but I'd guess most people throwing money away at private universities could go this route with the same basic outcome.
Applying that strategy in California works superbly well; I've known a number of folks who took advantage of the community college system here and then transferred to Berkeley or UCLA and have a top-tier credential for a fraction of the cost of an equivalently-reputed institution.
This is exactly what I did for my BS in Comp Sci. I finished my degree at SUNYIT in Utica, NY, which at the time, offered the last two years of your bachelor's degree, dovetailing nicely with community college. Final cost was about 16k. I remember people scoffing at community college, but don't pay attention to the elitism; you're being prudent.
The only issues I see with this is the peer effect, where students play to their playing field. Intelligent and motivated students placing themselves around less intelligent and less motivated students will often find themselves doing worse too, even up to not graduating. I myself know I am susceptible to this and try to push myself be being around other talented people. Not saying that there aren't intelligent and talented people in community college, but it may have an impact on your performance.
The other issue is missing out on extracurriculars. I learned a lot on my student news organization and got to experiment with building websites and trying out new special features (this was back when news orgs were a lot more cautious on the Web). It helped me get my first few jobs. It also helped me make a lot of connections (same with just going to the same school for four straight years).
If you go through with this plan, join some organizations as a junior at your four-year institution and get to know people outside of class. Connections matter a lot. Also, join professional organizations and go to conferences. You don't have to start doing that while a student, but it can't hurt either.
Luckily you're in Maryland where we aren't cutting higher education left and right. College Park is one of the better state schools, and it's pretty affordable still.
Good points, I suppose I was looking at it from my POV. Even before I started going to college I've loved learning on my own and developed an enjoyment of computers, so it doesn't matter much to me motivationally who my classmates are. Not to sound cocky, but the Intro classes I'm going through are already below my knowledge level (except some of the Math). By the time I'm hitting the higher level courses I'll be at the 4-year university.
I guess it depends on the community college, but I imagine most of the larger ones in major metro areas have extracurriculars that somewhat rival large universities. Here in Baltimore Co. there are a lot of clubs and the student newspaper is a pretty decent production[1].
Still I get what you mean about connections, especially in some of the more social disciplines like business. But for me (Comp Sci) it wouldn't be worth the extra 60k+, and I actually already have some connections into the field through family. Nepotism works for me :D
Keep in mind, though, that sticker price at an elite private university is often a lot more than you will actually pay if you are not from a wealthy family.
For example, according to Harvard:
During the 2012-2013 academic year, students from
families with incomes below $65,000, and with assets
typical for that income level, will generally pay
nothing toward the cost of attending Harvard College.
Families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000
will contribute from 0 to 10 percent of income,
depending on individual circumstances. Significant
financial aid also is available for families above
those income ranges. [1]
Things are similar at other major elite private universities.
If two years of community college and two years of in-state public school will provide all you want, then by all means do that. But if you would actually prefer someplace like Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, etc., it's worth actually running the numbers rather than eliminating them on the assumption that they are terrifically expensive. Most of them have online net price calculators that will let you enter details of you and your parents' incomes and assets and family situation (how many kids in college, for example), and will tell you your real cost of attending.
Yea you're right. If you've put the effort in and get accepted to a top flight university you shouldn't turn it down for economic reasons.
Personally this wasn't an option for me for various reasons. But I shouldn't have made it sound like going to elite private universities was economically non-viable.
I should have made my counterpoint the private liberal arts universities that don't really add that much value compared to my route. Or even just starting out at Community college and then transferring instead of going straight to a 4-year state college.
My wife is doing this, and while I agree the price is actually sane, the service can be extremely poor and horribly demoralizing, especially if you are bright and used to getting things done. Even at the flagship campuses of a community college system. The administrative functions of the school are extremely poor. Some of the instructors are OK others are downright unqualified to teach anything. When there are problems with registration (putting her in the wrong classes), or with instructors (teaching things that are wrong and grading accordingly), or advising (she has had a new advisor almost every semester and the degree requirements change about as often), there is nobody to go to (they think you are another whiner that just wants to complain your way out of the rules) and no recourse other than suck it up and suffer through.
So far she is looking likely graduate with an associates degree free after tax incentives. She is quite disillusioned with the idea now though and many areas of study she was previously very interested in she cannot stand now because it brings up memories of wretched experiences with. I'm not sure she'll be able to stand another two years in this sort of environment though, it feels like such a waste of time to the point where no piece of paper could be worth this much punishment.
The difference between her experience and my recent one in a masters program at a top tier university (largely paid by my employer or else I wouldn't have bothered) is night and day. The facilities work. The administration works. You can take the classes you want and the registration system works. Everything can be done online without standing in lines. If you actually want to talk to a person you can walk in and do it rather than setting up an appointment a month in advance. Instructors teach current knowledge and get their facts mostly correct. If you ask them questions they can usually answer them. They treat you like a human being rather than a child they are there to babysit. The other students don't think you are a god because you can show up on time and do some homework.
I don't intend to generalize to all community colleges, I am sure there are some OK ones, but at least with the ones I've had experiences with you may have to deal with an unreasonable level of BS in exchange for the discounted tuition. Because of the way the in county / in state rules work you often can't shop around too much and may be stuck with whatever school is where you live.
Oh I agree. The one I'm at is okay, and some of the instructors (usually the adjunct ones) are good. Still some of them seem like they barely could pass their own course, which can be quite frustrating. The administration is alright, the advisers aren't great, but I already know what I'm doing so I haven't particularly needed them. I can't imagine getting screwed over on registration though, where I am I can register online and I've not had a problem through 2 semesters. Perhaps I'm overestimating most community colleges based on the one I'm going to.
Still I'm just going into it with the mentality of it being work more than education. This is an obstacle I have to get through to get where I want to go. I've already decided on my career path, and I've learned more about it (Comp Sci) on my own than I will at community college. And it's something I'll continue to improve at the more I do it, so experience is more important than education. Especially considering how rapidly things change.
tl;dr It's definitely not a quality experience, just gotta put in the time and don't let it discourage you. And live in Baltimore County :P
3. Be very poor and very smart and go to any of the world's best institutions for free.
This is something that a lot of low income students never take into account when applying to schools. The fact of the matter is that most of America's top tier institutions will cover cost of tuition, as well as housing, for most of its poorer students.
So, be in the top 2-5% and come from poverty? That might work for a few, but it seems a bit unrealistic of a policy for affordable higher education for the rest of us.
In most of the schools I was considering the family annual income cutoff is around $65k a year. That's below the median for the country, and covers most of the lower and lower middle class. That's a pretty substantial part of this country.
As for being in the top 2-5%, that unfortunately is still a requirement.
Economist Garrett Jones has observed that by the signalling-theory of education, the race for ever-more-degrees is an individually-attractive but net-socially-destructive activity, almost like pollution… and generally you don't want to subsidize pollution:
As a few of the comments there note, this could actually form an argument for taxing rather than subsidizing schooling.
I believe the reasoning can be refined (as my bottom-most comment there notes): actual education still has positive social externalities. It's the granting of prestigious, rationed credentials that leads to the negative-sum competition, institutional rents, and growing costs.
So maybe, we could subsidize education… but tax credentials. The unbundling of education and assessment, as is happening with online offerings and could be further encouraged by policy, could make this easier.
The education that Kamenetz describes could be offered for free at wikipedia.org.
By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers.
University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.
My problem with the online course idea (aside from the fact that this is pretty much already available) is that it lacks interactivity. The only reason I went to half of my lectures as an undergrad was because I could ask questions and get an near instant, expert response.
And sure, it's possible to pause a video lecture and look something up, but in my experience, it's just not the same. If I'm trying to understand something for the first time, and a part of the lecture just doesn't quite make sense, I want the transaction cost of clarifying a point to be as low as possible.
10.000? Is this affordable for people who make no money? We're talking about people aged 18-22. Do they make money? How the hell is it fair to elect people by the wealth of their families?!
Come on people! Don't you see the huge discrimination?
This system is a blood sucker. Please demand a real change instead of dealing with it
$10,000/k for a Bachelor's equates to about $15 per a class period. At a class size of 30 that is $450 per class in revenue for the school. A professor spends 2 hours a week doing prep, 2 hours a week in office hours, 2 hours grading and 2 hours in class. Lets say overhead is 40%. That is equivalent to ~$30 dollars an hour to teach a class at 8 hours a week. Teach four classes and you are at ~40 hours a week. That puts you at about $50K a year after taxes. Most professors teach 1 or 2 classes a semester to leave time for grad students and research. --- are my assumptions way off here? 2 classes would mean $25k a year -- poverty line for family of 4.
Do you know the amount of the universities that you can study for free?
Dozens.
and I mean: no fee at all. I studied in three of them. And one of them was a great university with a lot of foreign students. Teachers were quite good. And I was also served high quality food (much better than the garbage you pay for every day) for free, every morning, noon and evening.
Open your eyes bro. Not so many people are able to pay thousands to the schools. And my point here is to tell your kind of god damn middle class; start considering everybody.
The LDS (Mormon) Church has a new program for members to get an online bachelor's degree from BYU-Idaho for a total tuition cost of $7,800 [1]. Judging from member/non-member tuition on campus, that's probably subsidized at a rate of 1:1, but even $15,600 isn't too bad.
BYU in Provo is still less than $10k tuition over 4 years and is arguably a much more prestigious and well rounded school.
Also important is the abundance of merit based scholarships at both schools. I know many people who were on either half tuition or full tuition scholarships their whole 4 years.
Tuition for members would be $19,400 (8*$2,425) over four years [1].
(I was one of the lucky ones with a full+ tuition scholarship. My wife had a half-tuition athletic scholarship, which was essentially full-tuition because her dad is faculty so she only had to pay half.)
Have young american students looking for a university ever thought of studying abroad ? I mean hell, my (swiss) bachelor's degree costs 580$ a semester, so 3480$ ... Add 1160$ and you have a Master's degree. Average salary is between 84K$ - 96K$ / year when I'm done. Even with a foreign diploma they can come back to the US if they want to work there.
63 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] thread"So why not do it?
"Kamenetz's plan doesn't lack for details. An as-yet unpublished appendix lays out exactly where spending at Cohort Colleges and Adult Online Us would go, down to the instructor salary level. But it also would uproot thousands of workers in the higher ed sector and radically change the careers of those who remained. Kamenetz acknowledges the concern, but thinks reform is too important to not do something drastic.
"'I recognize the political pain involved, but the purpose of public higher ed is to educate people, not to employ them,' she e-mails. 'One of the travesties of the current system is the percentage of classes taught by low-paid adjuncts. I envision a system that might have fewer jobs, but they're better jobs.'"
And my comment on that is that this always requires political courage. To make a large government appropriations plan (and higher education is often the second or third largest budget category in a state budget) work, you have to keep your eye on the people who are supposed to be served by the program. But the people who are employed by the program will almost always be more organized to lobby for their benefit before the state legislature, especially because they can use purported benefits to students as a fig leaf for demands for more administrators and less checking of the effectiveness of how higher education is delivered.
Most of the suggestions in the article seem sound. They also sound rather radical compared to what is usually proposed to improve the bang for the buck of colleges in the United States. It will be interesting to see how much uptake there is of any of these ideas.
Unfortunately, it'll never happen because there's simply too much money involved in the academic world. The people running the educational institutions, the people running the corporate world, and the people running government are all good friends and none of them want to do anything to screw over the other.
But ultimately, if you can manage a nearly-as-good (or in some cases, better) education, for $10K true out-of-pocket cost rather than $200K+, then eventually a lot more people will complete, and be loyal to, the $10K system than the legacy $200K+ one.
Since it is easy to get a loan, people will borrow as much as needed to get to the highest tier institution that will accept them. The private ones can thus increase their prices, and lure the staff with higher salaries. Now the public institutions need to level up salaries of professors and administrators, or they will leave for the private institutions.
That has been happening over the last 20 years. Remove the government guarantees for student loans and make them dischargeable in bankruptcy (that is, return their status to a normal loan, from the special status that they have now) - and all of a sudden, lenders will start caring about making reasonable loans, people will have less credit to spend on education, and the prices will go down significantly to a reasonably supported level.
(It is likely to cause an implosion of the higher-ed bubble in the US in the process. So be it - popping this bubble is long overdue)
http://qz.com/search/student+debt
That's depressing.
1. spend less on admins and have massive class sizes 2. spend less on sports, food, dorms, and other perks 5. cut most of the majors
vs.
3. oh, wait, another school reduced costs by spending more on personal instruction and having micro size classes because students actually graduated with less trouble - let's do that too! 4. offering more variety in learning methods actually proved successful, not less, so do that too!
People in NYC or California making $200K/year often pay >40% (getting close to 50% if you are in the $300K/year range) of their salary in taxes (33-35% federal, 8-13% state, and then there's sale tax. And estate tax) and get no reasonable-cost tuition nor reasonable-cost healthcare.
Every time this discussion comes up, US people are quick to quote federal tax rates but when I compared actual rates in NYC and CA, it seems like americans pay comparable taxes, and get nothing in return.
How does NZ fair in this respect? What's the real tax like (remember sales tax / vat), and what do you get for it?
The NZ Government provides free student allowance (a few hundred dollars per week living allowance for your first 4? years of tertiary education, means-tested against your parents' income, not paid back) as well as interest-free student loans (for as long as you stay within the country).
Points #1 and #5, though, would likely not go over well with current university faculty. Reshuffling of faculty roles seems much better designed by those with classroom/advising experience. And who's to judge which are similar or niche fields of study, besides departments themselves?
I, along with many people I know, got paid to go to school this way.
Why people are paying tens of thousands of dollars a year/semester is beyond me.
I'd prefer to get an online bachelor's degree if they existed.
I know the price (i.e. tuition) is increasing, but this is due to colleges increasing tuition rates to make up for shortfalls as state budgets for higher education are cut. But I haven't seen any data showing that the costs have risen.
It's also worth noting that the #2 suggestion is mostly just an accounting trick that would increase the price to students, not decrease it. If "perks" like room and board aren't provided out of tuition, students will have to pay for that somehow anyway - they're necessities, not perks. And removing state subsidies for those things means that students will be paying even more, if you add up tuition + room + board.
The feeling that's "in the air" is that what's really happened is buildup of too much management in the school systems. There seem to be far more "managers" per professor than there were before, and those managers are being paid far to much, especially in comparison to the professors doing the actual teaching.
It's pretty classic: most large-ish universities have marketing departments (or hire marketing departments), large non-educational functions and services that take up tremendous man power, overly large "cultural" aspects like sports, and many more.
The cost of educating hasn't really changed, but that's not what most universities are focused on doing anymore.
[1]:http://graphics.wsj.com/documents/NONCLASS1212/
Unless there is data showing otherwise, I would argue that costs haven't changed, only the price.
The cost of providing education in 2013 at University of Washington is a little less than it was in 1990: $16,800 vs. $17,000. The difference is that in 1990, the state paid for 82%, where today it pays 29%.[2] That's where your tuition increases are coming from.
[2]:http://www.washington.edu/discover/budget/
Also, Coursera, Udacity, OCW, Kahn and iTunes
Pluses of going legit:
Hazards: [0] http://m.reviewjournal.com/business/economy/better-slice-hsi...Sure you could sit in every day on my morning Thermo lecture and go unnoticed, but I've learned very little in that class that I couldn't already get out of an excellent textbook.
On the other hand Pharmacokinetics meets once a week in the professor's office. He also happens to be one of the leaders of the field. For two hours a week we get to discuss complex pharmacokinetic practices, ask open ended questions and, as he would say "learn how to learn". Museum Display Theory also meets once a week off campus with the head curator of the city art museum and today we discussed Foucault's Panopticon as it relates to museum curation.
These are things worth paying for, or as in my case, working hard enough to get financial aid for.
Caltech has/had pretty awesome staff/student ratio.
So true. The people I'm planning to do my startup are battle tested. We've pulled all nighters, dealt with high stress situations, and come out of it as friends. We know each others work habits, strengths and weaknesses.
All of that is going to be really important when we'll have just graduated with probably no funding.
I think the real trouble is that college is still awesome for people who can afford it. It's like anything in capitalism, whatever the people who can pay want is what happens. I read an article awhile back that discussed how one of the private schools in NYC was building new luxury student housing and sending limos to pick students up from the airport, that's about as far from these recommendations as you can get.
The point is that change isn't going to come from the elite schools, not real change. They may offer online programs and such, just dabbling really, but they have no trouble attracting wealthy students and donors, so they have no real incentive to radically change what they are doing. At best, they may tack on some extra programs under different names that just further cement the inequality in education we have in the US.
So, change needs to come from the bottom, from the small state schools and community colleges whose students are struggling to fund their educations. But state schools are on strict budgets, and small ones have small endowments. So real change won't come from there either because those institutions can't afford to make such radical changes, they literally don't have enough money. All they can do in many cases is what they've been doing in the past until they can't do that any more and then they can close up shop.
Either way, I personally have a pretty bleak view of the future of higher education in the US.
The somewhat counter-intuitive answer is that easy money has increased the price of education, in this case easy borrowing.
The same phenomenon is responsible for almost all bubbles in modern history. Interest rates dropped and qualification criteria got loose and house prices tripled in some areas, also rising in almost all. VC's got sloppy and we had the dot-com bubble.
The serious problem facing America today is that easy money is already flowing yet this bubble is also called "barely getting by as a nation."
Based on my reading of Archibald and Feldman's book Why Does College Cost So Much?, that doesn't seem to be the case: their data show that Baumol's Cost Disease is the real culprit.
1. Go to a community college in a county that you are a resident for your two-year associates. The money I'm getting from Pell grants is paying my 18-credit hours per semester tuition right now (Roughly $120 per credit hour tuition). Books on top of that are costing me about 300 a semester (buy cheap old editions as much as possible). I've gotten scholarship money to cover that, and I'll also get Tax credit money.
2. Transfer to an in-state 4-year public university. Tuition rates will double for me during this transition, but YMMV (I'm in Maryland FYI). The hike in tuition will cost me about 7k a year for two years. Hence ~15k out of pocket for a degree.
Moral of the story: If you really want a premier education where you will be learning from those on the forefront of research, by all means spend 100k at an elite private college. If you want to be part of academia or research projects this is probably the route you have to take.
If instead you know what career you are going into and you have a desire to learn those skills on your own, then go the cheap route and just get the piece of paper to prove to HR you are worthy of a job.
*Obviously some careers might not fit this model, but I'd guess most people throwing money away at private universities could go this route with the same basic outcome.
The other issue is missing out on extracurriculars. I learned a lot on my student news organization and got to experiment with building websites and trying out new special features (this was back when news orgs were a lot more cautious on the Web). It helped me get my first few jobs. It also helped me make a lot of connections (same with just going to the same school for four straight years).
If you go through with this plan, join some organizations as a junior at your four-year institution and get to know people outside of class. Connections matter a lot. Also, join professional organizations and go to conferences. You don't have to start doing that while a student, but it can't hurt either.
Luckily you're in Maryland where we aren't cutting higher education left and right. College Park is one of the better state schools, and it's pretty affordable still.
I guess it depends on the community college, but I imagine most of the larger ones in major metro areas have extracurriculars that somewhat rival large universities. Here in Baltimore Co. there are a lot of clubs and the student newspaper is a pretty decent production[1].
Still I get what you mean about connections, especially in some of the more social disciplines like business. But for me (Comp Sci) it wouldn't be worth the extra 60k+, and I actually already have some connections into the field through family. Nepotism works for me :D
[1]http://blog.ccbcmd.edu/connection/
For example, according to Harvard:
Things are similar at other major elite private universities.If two years of community college and two years of in-state public school will provide all you want, then by all means do that. But if you would actually prefer someplace like Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, MIT, etc., it's worth actually running the numbers rather than eliminating them on the assumption that they are terrifically expensive. Most of them have online net price calculators that will let you enter details of you and your parents' incomes and assets and family situation (how many kids in college, for example), and will tell you your real cost of attending.
[1] http://www.harvard.edu/harvard-glance
Personally this wasn't an option for me for various reasons. But I shouldn't have made it sound like going to elite private universities was economically non-viable.
I should have made my counterpoint the private liberal arts universities that don't really add that much value compared to my route. Or even just starting out at Community college and then transferring instead of going straight to a 4-year state college.
So far she is looking likely graduate with an associates degree free after tax incentives. She is quite disillusioned with the idea now though and many areas of study she was previously very interested in she cannot stand now because it brings up memories of wretched experiences with. I'm not sure she'll be able to stand another two years in this sort of environment though, it feels like such a waste of time to the point where no piece of paper could be worth this much punishment.
The difference between her experience and my recent one in a masters program at a top tier university (largely paid by my employer or else I wouldn't have bothered) is night and day. The facilities work. The administration works. You can take the classes you want and the registration system works. Everything can be done online without standing in lines. If you actually want to talk to a person you can walk in and do it rather than setting up an appointment a month in advance. Instructors teach current knowledge and get their facts mostly correct. If you ask them questions they can usually answer them. They treat you like a human being rather than a child they are there to babysit. The other students don't think you are a god because you can show up on time and do some homework.
I don't intend to generalize to all community colleges, I am sure there are some OK ones, but at least with the ones I've had experiences with you may have to deal with an unreasonable level of BS in exchange for the discounted tuition. Because of the way the in county / in state rules work you often can't shop around too much and may be stuck with whatever school is where you live.
Still I'm just going into it with the mentality of it being work more than education. This is an obstacle I have to get through to get where I want to go. I've already decided on my career path, and I've learned more about it (Comp Sci) on my own than I will at community college. And it's something I'll continue to improve at the more I do it, so experience is more important than education. Especially considering how rapidly things change.
tl;dr It's definitely not a quality experience, just gotta put in the time and don't let it discourage you. And live in Baltimore County :P
This is something that a lot of low income students never take into account when applying to schools. The fact of the matter is that most of America's top tier institutions will cover cost of tuition, as well as housing, for most of its poorer students.
As for being in the top 2-5%, that unfortunately is still a requirement.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/degree_pollutio....
As a few of the comments there note, this could actually form an argument for taxing rather than subsidizing schooling.
I believe the reasoning can be refined (as my bottom-most comment there notes): actual education still has positive social externalities. It's the granting of prestigious, rationed credentials that leads to the negative-sum competition, institutional rents, and growing costs.
So maybe, we could subsidize education… but tax credentials. The unbundling of education and assessment, as is happening with online offerings and could be further encouraged by policy, could make this easier.
By removing research, extracurriculars, sports, and on-campus living, she is paring a university education down to a simple exchange of knowledge, which is free online. These things all add to the essence of college, a place to transition from a child to an adult. The value of college is not what you learn in classes, but the personal development you go through by taking leadership positions in student organizations and pursuing passions with other young thinkers.
University is expensive because it's an adult development camp in addition to a knowledge exchange. The most expensive camps produce well developed, open minded individuals who are generally better positioned to succeed. I'd be surprised if I'm using anything I learned in a classroom even 5 years out of college, but the lessons learned outside the classroom will stay with me for life.
And sure, it's possible to pause a video lecture and look something up, but in my experience, it's just not the same. If I'm trying to understand something for the first time, and a part of the lecture just doesn't quite make sense, I want the transaction cost of clarifying a point to be as low as possible.
Come on people! Don't you see the huge discrimination?
This system is a blood sucker. Please demand a real change instead of dealing with it
Do you know the amount of the universities that you can study for free?
Dozens.
and I mean: no fee at all. I studied in three of them. And one of them was a great university with a lot of foreign students. Teachers were quite good. And I was also served high quality food (much better than the garbage you pay for every day) for free, every morning, noon and evening.
Open your eyes bro. Not so many people are able to pay thousands to the schools. And my point here is to tell your kind of god damn middle class; start considering everybody.
Don't be one of those fucking selfish dicks.
[1] http://www.byui.edu/online/pathway/tuition
Also important is the abundance of merit based scholarships at both schools. I know many people who were on either half tuition or full tuition scholarships their whole 4 years.
(I was one of the lucky ones with a full+ tuition scholarship. My wife had a half-tuition athletic scholarship, which was essentially full-tuition because her dad is faculty so she only had to pay half.)
[1] http://finserve.byu.edu/content/tuition-and-general-fees