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Comment by charlieflowers | Hacker News Reader

This is so obviously a scam that I don't see how it can hold up. Tuition has gone to sky high levels, and who is getting that money?

Not the professors, let's get real. They have probably gotten sweet raises, but nowhere near the growth rate of tuition.

The armies of "administrators" are getting huge salaries, but the main point of the whole bubble is that it is a great way to proactively enslave a whole new generation before they even have a chance.

It's so obviously a "sold my soul to the company store" situation that I can't believe everyone doesn't see through it right away.

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They see through it. They just know they have no other option. Educators raise rates because they can, students pay the rates because they have to. It's the same problem we have in healthcare.

Until employers start scrutinizing education in terms other than "No degree? No thanks.", then we will continue to have this problem, in my opinion.

> They see through it. They just know they have no other option.

To add to this, administrators know if they don't hire extensively they are likely to be replaced by someone who will. There is no control mechanism. Giving students a small periodic vote in respect of their top administration would go a long way towards ameliorating such corruption.

The "Dictator's Handbook" covers such topics https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

Many students pay way more than they have to. I graduated from a top-10 public school (in-state) after transferring from community college and my total bill was about $35k. That's not nothing, but also not a ball-and-chain six-figure mark that some people accrue.

There are better options than a lot of people have taken. To me the solution has to involve better financial and career counseling for high school graduates.

Natural selection at work. Some make the wrong choice to take too much debt.

>Natural selection at work. Some make the wrong choice to take too much debt.

That will backfire when enough people have made the wrong choice that the decide to vote someone in office who promises to wipe out the debt.

Precisely! Visarga is bold enough to speak the obvious truth!

Problem is many, if not most, incoming students are unable to understand the financial ramifications of student loans. This does not bode well for their futures, especially in technical fields.

David Letterman once joked that "The lotto is a tax you pay for not paying attention in math class." One might say the same about college student loans.

As an aside, your lotto comment made me think of expected value (EV) and poker. At some point the pot of a lotto can become large enough where the EV demands you buy a ticket. Taxes I think make this number almost impossible to reach though.

> Until employers start scrutinizing education in terms other than "No degree? No thanks.", then we will continue to have this problem, in my opinion.

Requiring a degree is fine. Just waive state university tuition. In Germany education is free, for example.

>Not the professors, let's get real. They have probably gotten sweet raises, but nowhere near the growth rate of tuition.

Actually, at most institutions, professors' raises barely match the rate of inflation, and the majority of teaching has been moved onto adjunct faculty who have no job security.

yeah but have you seen the new leisure center!

equal parts administrator and the state, since as I understand it the tuition hikes track funding cuts at the government level for higher ed. that is the real killer.

so, do the taxpayers see the money as reduced sales and property tax?

Wishful thinking. Unfortunately, cost savings like this at a state level rarely translate into reduced taxes or greater services, nowadays they get allocated into payouts for the states underfunded pensions.

>> since as I understand it the tuition hikes track funding cuts at the government level for higher ed. that is the real killer.

No, that isn't the real killer. That's the educrat line you've been trained to regurgitate. The truth is that higher-ed is getting about the same percent GDP it's been getting since the 70's [1]. The "real killer" is the annual 3.5% above inflation tuition increases [2] that are inflicted to fund an ever growing amount of staff and their gold plated benefits.

>> do the taxpayers see the money as reduced sales and property tax?

Are you kidding? Where is the place where taxpayers are liv'n la Vida Loca in their property tax free la-la land? We're paying out the ass. Some RINO manages to cut a half a percent or maybe just not increase taxes as fast and they shout it from the roof tops; HUGE TAX CUT. OMGWTFBBQ I SAVED YOU 1.003% VOTE FOR MEEE!

Please kid; stop drinking the educrat kool-aid. The only redeeming feature of this crazy ass education bubble is that it isn't growing as fast as the crazy ass health care bubble.

[1] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending [2] https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...

> The truth is that higher-ed is getting about the same percent GDP it's been getting since the 70's

Isn't it true that many more students attend college than was the case in the 1970's? For example, between 2003 and 2013 enrollment increased 20%[1]. US population only increased about 10%.

> inflicted to fund an ever growing amount of staff and their gold plated benefits

Do you have any data to back this up? This has not been my experience in California's State University system. The benefits are ok, comparable to industry, but the pay is awful.

1. http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98

Those universities in the seventies served far fewer students. In case you haven't noticed enrollment is up as a proportion of the population. Funding as a portion of GDP should've matched it as well.

The per-student funding has gone way down as enrollment is way up. In total the funding has gone down less or not at all.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/16/universities...

In the UK the professors are lucky to have a permanent contract, nevermind sweet raises!!

At this point it is still "worth it" though. Might be in huge debt but you can get a job that you can afford that debt though. Now I personally don't think this is a good environment for a healthy economy, but for many it is still "worth it". It'll crash when it isn't, and I think we're getting close to that.

The problem is it is artificial. It has been manipulated.

It produces an army of people who have to work every day of their lives, which produces tax revenue and a big, growing economy.

Going to college might be a better choice for an individual than not going to college, but the system has been intentionally set up this way to turn the masses into indentured servants. (Originally, it might have been unexpected that student loans would create this bubble ... but now, it's not a surprise, it's a valuable exploitation mechanism).

It's not the optimal approach for our society ... it only serves to help the Haves gain more control over the Have-nots.

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