Students are free to go to less expensive schools. However, as long as people underestimate debt, spending more to attract more students is simply rational behavior.
Thankfully, college fees were abolished in my country (Ireland) in 1996. It enabled me personally to envision going to college where I couldn't before.
I knew I was covering my college tuition and even in 2000, I couldn't understand how I could ever afford out of state tuition and room and board. I had near perfect grades and solid test scores, but the financial obligation scared the hell out of me and I had no idea private schools handed out big scholarships for good students.
I ended up staying in town and going to my local state college and had a good experience, but I completely missed out on the prospect of going to a top university where I would meet other ambitious and curious people. I worked part-time to full-time for four years to pay for my tuition, and it was tough. I wish I could've been immersed in college and academia and even college-life, but the cost just felt like a huge barrier when I was 18 years old.
TL;DR: I fear poorer people may be more afraid to attend college because of the costs, causing an even greater gap between the haves and have-nots.
Agree it's rational but it's still ironic. Things like Uncle Sam handing out loans like candy is not helping or states cutting fund to state school is also not great.
The less expensive school tactic from what I hear these days is to go to a community college for 2 years to get as many prerequisites in then switch to a more expensive university to graduate. The rational behavior from the more expensive university is then probably to refuse credits from community colleges so they can increase their profits and fleece students more.
...which funnels those students into state schools that are usually forced by state regulation to allow CCs in the same state to operate feeder programs. The rich kids go to private schools or stick around to get masters and we're back where we were decades ago only all the numbers are much bigger, the minimum amount of degree is higher (a 2yr is the new high school diploma, a masters is the new bachelors, etc.) the average person gets being an adult pushed back by about four years and whether society is better for it depends on who you ask.
So basically it's a circle.
In other words, it makes sense for government to heavily subsidize it. If, that is, government were interested in the welfare of its populace instead of the welfare of its donors.
An internship helped me, I was enrolled in a state school yet was pushing pencils the same as a Princeton student, this made realized the school name wasn't going to change anything in this path, just whatever technicality lets me get the degree.
For business, capital and investment banking, Ivy League puts you very far ahead, but outside of that, especially if your life involves working for someone else, the trade and the school are largely irrelevant compared to just having a degree, which also has limited relevance in many fields.
Do you have a source for this statement?
How do you feel about that?
And when will they be adult age? Even if they somehow became aware 2 years after attending that it's a waste of money, then they've already lost the ability to leverage community college for general courses with automatic acceptance into state (one of the less expensive paths) and racked up a ton of debt. Why not just finish it at that point?
We need regulation at the federal level to fix this.
Im not exactly a proponent of regulating peoples impressionability, gullibility and lack of objective reasoning
Extremely Simple math is what should inform them within four years
But since that isnt happening I could see them becoming a large enough bloc to vote for such regulation of the human condition
'Scrapping tuition fees has helped rich students at the expense of poor ones'
Granted, the latter assumes that value to the society correlates with future earnings, which may not always be the case.
This is a little like saying "As long as people do bad stuff, they will go to prison".
Yeah, but that doesn't mean "people" will stop doing bad stuff.
I remember post-2008 financial crisis a lot of people were blaming consumers for going into debt to buy crap, like new TVs, cars, and whatnot on credit. And it was "their fault" doing it. I don't disagree that everyone has a personal responsibility for stuff like this, but I always think of issues like these in terms of "systems" and environments that set up the conditions for people to do that.
Central banks everywhere made interests dirt cheap, which led to banks offering credit for everything and easy credit to obtain, too. It's like they couldn't loan money fast enough. And yeah, a lot of people did fall for it, but the conditions were already created for them to do that.
It's no different than tobacco ads brainwashing people into thinking that smoking is cool and you will be a better version of yourself if you smoke, you will feel good, and all that.
So where I'm getting at is that in this case it's mainly the government guaranteeing loans and making it "easy" for students to pay for college with loans is what's really the problem here.
Make public college free (with what money? I don't know, maybe the $70 billion a year the military just received for no good reason, even before an audit was done of their expenses?), and then ban banks from offering college loans. You'll quickly see this problem solve itself.
Including finance in a basic math education for every high-school student would IMO make a significant difference. Listing interest paid as both a percentage and a total over the lifetime of a loan might also discourage people.
That said, I took a few very low interest loans, but I at least had the tools to do some basic cost benefit analysis. I watched many people spend way to much money for a sub par education.
Only in a market of irrational actors :)