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Comment by noetic_techy | Hacker News Reader

"The question then becomes a matter of how we fix this without diminishing access to a college education."

This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. I'd rather have cheap college then universal access for every single person who wants a English Literature or Anthropology degree with low ROI. Colleges are now awash in money and they pump it into newer and fancier campuses to attract more of that government backed debt from all the masses, driving up cost significantly.

Or how about breaking the degree monopoly with something like equivalent certification programs and let private companies fill the gap. Similar to what Google is doing with its certificate program they are rolling out. 4 years for a piece of paper that includes 2 years of general education classes for "well roundness" is starting to look more and more ridiculous considering the cost of that "well roundness" is years of non-dis chargeable debt weighing you down during your best decades.

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A lot of the cost of American college doesn't go towards education but things like sports stadiums and teams, various non-academic events, administrators, various other non-academic staff, uniquely-expensive American legal costs and insurance, on-campus police (a big wtf for Europeans), and then there are also those people who decide which Halloween costumes are appropriate for students, investigate various misconduct on campus etc.

Americans expect college campuses to be like resorts, parents expect a lot of pampering and personalized whatever for their kid etc. In Europe, university students are independent adults who take a bunch of courses, take exams etc, but have lives on their own, outside uni. They may rent a room in housing with connections to the university, but the university doesn't babysit them. They don't expect anyone else to keep tabs on what they need to do, no pampering. There is no customer mentality. You spare a lot of money this way.

So it's at least in part cultural and also reflects in different attitudes regarding healthcare, restaurants, retail, and general business conduct.

The schools don't have shareholders to whom dividends might be paid. The extra programs and the employees to support them will expand to use up all extra income.

> Americans expect college campuses to be like resorts

You say that but the typical dorm room offers no privacy or air conditioning, and the showers and bathrooms are shared. They're similar in nature to SROs which the US pretty much abolished anywhere else, but way more expensive.

And then universities have the audacity to demand that students live in them freshman year, even though living off campus would be cheaper.

Yeah the dorm situation is a bit unfair.

My freshmen year I paid $8,400 to have access to a bed, desk, 4 drawers, and a third of a closet (two other roommates) for a total of 8 months (no access during winter).

Living off campus costs just about $450/mo for a private room with utilities and AC. If you could find a landlord that lets you cram 3 people in 1 room I can't imagine how cheap the rent would be

(except you won't find it because city regulations forbid more than 4 persons per lease, and you can only have 1 lease per obvious division of a house/building. To go above the limit you need a boarding house license, which is how the school gets away with charging $67k/yr for 8 people to share a 3 bedroom apartment).

And they force the students living in them to purchase meal plans which cost 3x what a restaurant meal would cost for defrosted food from Aramark/Sodexo. Obviously someone is getting paid.

Last time I ran the numbers at my alma mater, the mandatory meal plans were (in most circumstances) more expensive than paying cash for the same meals at the same dining halls.

There were a few low-end restaurants on campus too (sandwiches, wraps, pizza, burgers, etc) that were both better and far cheaper than the dining halls. Their defining characteristic was that you couldn't spend your dining dollars there.

Same at my alma mater. One point is worth $1 at the dining hall. You can top up points for $1/1, but you're required to buy a plan of at least 1,200 points that costs $1,800.

https://diningservices.wustl.edu/meal-plans/undergraduate/

I always tried to explain to people that they should get the smallest plan but some didn't get it.

That's not exactly a good sign for the numerical literacy of your undergrads.

Many colleges have old buildings on campus that are cash cows. There's little incentive to cut margins by building new.

But recent buildings look better, and the off-campus "communities" in Texas look better than ... most apartments in New York. [0]

[0] https://www.theblockwestcampus.com/features.aspx

>But recent buildings look better, and the off-campus "communities" in Texas look better than ... most apartments in New York. [0]

How bad are the apartments in New York? The one you cite has great marketing literature but abysmal reviews: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-block-austin-3?osq=the+block

To be fair, the last time I was apartment shopping (8 or so years ago) I quickly realized that basically every apartment complex gets terrible reviews.

I guess this is the equivalent in NYC.[0] Which, admittedly, looks nicer than my dorm in college, even accounting for the normal difference between advertising and reality.

But most of my Manhattan-based friends started off with summer jobs and living in spaces smaller than closets out in suburbia. But that came with a certain vie boheme that you probably don't get at "The Block" in Texas.

[0]https://www.63wallstreet.com/63-wall-street-new-york-ny/inte...

I had heard that there was a huge trend among colleges to build new single occupancy dorms that have the ammnities of a nice bed and breakfast. Partly due to increasing expectations and partly due to decreasing social skills around sharing living space (more only children or grew up in large house with no shared rooms among siblings). My alma mater built one of these dorms 15 years ago and it was incredibly popular.

From some quick googling: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-en...

...demand that students live in them freshman year

What? I've been watching movies and series made in USA for decades and didn't know that. I assumed that students living there was a way to save money or the parents wanted it. I had no idea it was required.

If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?

Depends on the University. One I went to probably 90% of students lived off campus.

See: commuter school

> If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?

The uni I worked for eventually rolled out that policy after the initial "all freshmen live in dorms now" backlash, but it's a tiny fraction of the student population whose parents live in town. State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers, for obscure reasons involving a mistrust of European politics.

Can you elaborate on the last point?

US states generally have not placed their capitals in their population centers. I'm told some of it is a fear of big city corruption might have on democracy (not without reason, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_machine#In_the_Unite...).

The logic seemed to play out in land grant unis as well, but looking at some history articles about my alma mater, it seems more complicated than "big city bad" -- the big city was on the opposite side of the state boundary river, and on the opposite side of the Slavery issue. Instead as best I can tell, the decision was driven by local legislature party politics of the time, with accusations of voter fraud, vote buying, and bad faith negotiations.

Perhaps the reason most of the state unis I can think of are in small towns is simply that without a crossroads or river confluence driving trade, landowners in those areas were most eager to get a state institution to prop up property values?

I made the mistake of commuting from home my first year in university (UW, i graduated high school in the area), it is really not that great to “commute” and pure commuter schools (where most students commute to from home) offer a different experience from other universities.

One point of university is to make it on your own. If your daddy is rich, this is in the dorms, if not, you rent a basement room nearby and bike in.

I went to SUNY Buffalo and while it isn't purely commuter, there was a significant commuter population. I lived with my parents nearby and had an 8-9 minute commute. If I had an 8am lecture (before the majority of commuters were there for the day), I could typically leave the house at 7:49am and still usually get to my seat as the professor began the lecture around 8:01am.

I'm kind of impressed because when I was in college it took more than 10 minutes to find a parking space.

Lucky, I had to commute for about a total of an hour by car (to park and ride) and bus (to campus).

> State unis are deliberately located away from the population centers

Probably because its cheaper to buy lot of land away from population centers.

A prestigious residential university is the student's whole life. Leaving its boundaries is a special event. You eat, sleep, study, exercise, work, etc. with your classmates around the clock. Like a monastery. Administrators are not just engineering the content of lecture. They are engineering the group of classmates in the library at 12:45am puzzling out together what the lecture meant. Students who only show up on campus for scheduled classes throw a wrench in those plans. Hence the mandate to live on campus.

This has always been the image of college in the United States. The alleged change is that conditions are getting less monastic.

This mandate can relax after freshmen year because at that point you've integrated. You'll take an apartment with some friends in the neighborhood, but you won't really be leaving. The university may no longer be your landlord and your grocer, but your landlord and your grocer will be doing 99% of their business with university-affiliated customers. The neighborhood is still campus, de facto if not de jure. You're still immersed. Technically some students may use this freedom to move across town or back in with their parents, but the mandatory year on campus has brought this risk acceptably low.

When it works, it works well. I have memories from late nights in the library and from Saturday evenings in the theater control booth that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. But many schools in their search for prestige are trying to force this on kids who don't want it, and on top of that are failing to deliver.

Most schools don't require you to live in a dorm freshman year, at least mine certainly didn't and plenty of my peers at other schools didn't have problems getting off campus accommodations freshman year.

Students live on campus for convenience and/or for socialization/environment - its not to save money, depending on a bunch of factors it's usually possible to live cheaper off campus.

Mine did, but it was state school and cheap (10k/yr tuition and room/board)

97% of Stanford student undergrads live on campus. At many other colleges students are not allowed to live off campus unless they submit a formal request and receive approval to do so, and 90%+ is common. Then there are other types of schools with few or no students living on campus.

> If it's in the same city, can students just keep living with their parents?

It's a pretty easy requirement to get out of if you know to expect it and are able to plan a bit. Parents in the same city are one option. If you already have a lease, that often suffices. I tested out of a few generals so that I wasn't technically a freshman when I started. Etc. There are loopholes for a lot of situations.

> I assumed that students living there was a way to save money or the parents wanted it. I had no idea it was required.

It shocked me at first too. I've talked to a lot of people trying to get a sense of the other side's perspective, and a large number of parents feel that the "college experience" is so beneficial that they don't feel anyone should be able to make the in-all-cases worse decision to live off campus..... It's a tiny bit similar to the mindset behind worker protections -- some deals are so bad that workers ought not to be able to make them in any circumstances. I don't agree in the slightest that students should be _forced_ to stay in a dorm and whatnot, but people who aren't me feel the opposite pretty strongly.

IMO a lot of oddities in the US university system can be explained (please bear with me) by assuming students are viewed by the larger system not as adults consciously making an investment but as children who need to be cautiously guided into the real world. You don't get to choose to live off campus because you aren't an adult and need to be protected from making the wrong choice. You need to make friends in the dorms because otherwise you won't be socialized for the real world. Teachers assign points for homework because it will give you an incentive to do it (because you're not an adult yet and can't make the right decisions without additional incentives). It's even solidified a bit in our laws and tax code -- financial aid must be available because college is an important part of transitioning into the workforce, and any available aid explicitly assumes you have an amicable relationship with your parents and that they will pay as much as they're able to help you through the last stage of your childhood.

While I understand that many students in the US are away from home, this degree of coupling between education and housing seems odd to me, an outsider. It adds a lot of requirements that certainly make the operation significantly more expensive. Even in the less luxurious ones.

True, but I enjoyed living in the dorms very much. I was never bored :-)

I moved off campus into an apartment my senior year, thinking it would be cool, but regretted it.

I attended a small but well-known liberal arts school that increased tuition about 20k in well under a decade.

In a single year the tuition increased 5k, and yet the department of my major was downsized and classes that I needed to complete my degree were full. At the same time though they built a new $42 million "cultural exchange" building and began adding an enormous sports facility. It turned out that actually there was no intended purpose for the new building either, and it was mostly sat empty as far as I know.

It seems to me the appeal of the expensive colleges is at least partly that you get to hang out with other rich kids, making connections that can benefit you later financially.

It's like Donald Trump's golf-club you pay lot mostly for the chance of being part of the club

> things like sports stadiums and teams

I went to a large school in one of the big NCAA athletic conferences. Their stadium cost around $100M in 2020 dollars, and they bring in roughly $100M in revenue from all sports annually. They call football and basketball "revenue sports" because they fund all the others. I'm not sure how much tuition goes to sports, but the big ones are very self-sufficient. That, and they serve as marketing for the school, and that can add value to the degree.

Sure but that's just an adjacent business model with very little relationship to the core mission.

Universities could also say, run gambling halls, nightclubs, or any other business you can think of.

The criticism is they are distracted from their core purpose and mission in society, which certainly isn't to run large entertainment venues.

Sport, at least in principle, if you squint, has more to do with education. After all, grade schools have a physical education subject but no gambling subject. (Elite, pro, spectator sport is different though, that's why the squinting is required).

Generally, Americans have an obsession with what they call "well-roundedness" and a "holistic" approach which I don't see elsewhere that much. For example in European university admissions nobody cares about subjective stuff like volunteering experience, musical talent etc, when doing university admissions. It's all focused on the narrow academic subject. You also don't take generic subjects unrelated to your study program as in American undergrad.

The whole culture and concept of what a university is supposed to be, is pretty different in the US overall

I thought college sports helped university get huge amount of money. But yeah, American's obsession of sports is bewildering. Caltech was mocked in national media for their poor performance in NCCA. I mean, really? Why would I give rat's ass about NCCA or Caltech in NCCA? For all I care about, I just wanna see Caltech produce top-notch education, research, and students.

Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost. It does have it's problems but it is not one or the other.

You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one. Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down

>Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost.

The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers. Not US high but still, it's not free, there's lots of bloat in the system that thrives on volume of students not on quality so they try to push forward legislation and programs to increase the number of students, especially from abroad and build more faculties/universities with more staff to hire regardless if the jobs market has need for more students or not.

It's not super expensive for the taxpayers but because it's mostly free for the students, lots of them treat it like Highschool 2.0, bouncing in and out, not bothering to finish it or prolonging it till their thirties, etc. which turns into of a waste of public resources at some point.

No, the cost to tax payers in Europe is less than what people in USA have to pay the college.

This is because my University (in Europe) had no sport facilities whatsoever, not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc.

It did teaching + research, and nothing else.

Right -- in the context of Europe, high quality means high education quality; it may not be high quality in the sense of all the frills Americans usually expect out of the college experience.

For reference, cost in France is about 11kE per year for undergraduate and 22kE per year for master in computer science engineering. That's what it costs the university per student, not what the student pays (up to 1k a year). This doesn't cover accommodation or canteen since that's not part of the university.

I don't know what's the cost in the US but I don't imagine it's orders more. The worst number I heard from coworkers was 60k$ a year in NYC (that's easily triple income and taxes compared to France so not a straight comparison).

That's roughly how much public in-state universities cost in the United States on average[0]. Some states are significantly cheaper.

[0] https://www.valuepenguin.com/student-loans/average-cost-of-c...

Wait. You're comparing total cost in France, to cost at the point of use excluding taxes in the US. Education in public in-state universities is also highly subsidized.

Is it highly subsidized? Any reason to think that is the case?

It is indeed highly subsidized, to the tune of billions a year. You can read the Financials online.

Do you mean subsidized in the sense of student loans backed by the government?

No. The link I was replying to was referring to State Universities. They are owned and partially financed by the government.

Sure. But what I'm wondering is what subsidies you're referring to. Are you talking about grants and loans that students get, or maybe federal grant money for research?

These organizations literally directly receive money from the government. Students grants are a factor too, but they are owned and financed in large part by the State. That's called a subsidy. They are losing money, that the taxpayer shoulders.

Ok. So I looked at the FY19 budget for one of the universities I attended and for the overall budget of $7.3 billion it's broken out like this (numbers are rounded). [1]

Tuition and fees -> $1.8 bb

Government appropriations (it looks like this is what you're referring to as direct subsidies?) -> $ 470 mm

Grants and contracts -> $862 mm

Sales & Services University -> $543 mm

Sales & Services Health System -> $3.3 bb

Sales & Services OSU Physicians -> $480 mm

Gifts and Endowment -> $380 mm

Negligible other items -> $100 mm or something.

So what subsidies are you referring to? Happy to look at a different university if you want to provide an example.

[1]https://busfin.osu.edu/sites/default/files/12_a_fy21_budget_...

-edit-

Unfortunately I can't reply, but I'm not sure why you're only considering government appropriations with respect to tuition instead of the entire budget. Seems a bit selective to me.

Yup, government appropriations is about 38% of tuition. Part of tuition is also paid for by the government via various programs.

So if you want to look at total cost starting from the average amount a student pays as tuition you have to increase it by 38%. There are of course other intangibles paid for by the government such as the initial investment, often the land and a part of the endowment too.

So it is consequence fair to say that that tuition in state university is subsidized by the government.

Those state subsidies have steadily been eroded over the time period under discussion--part of why tuition has increased. At most large state flagships, public funding is now a significant minority of revenue.

Right. But you still can't compare US price without subsidies to French price with subsidies. They are still a significant minority, about 30-40% of what Tuition brings in.

Besides, public funding given a year ago still factors into costs today.

Idk. People say this but are sports the real cost driver here? Many sports programs in the US pay for themselves and more or might be close to break even.

We also have Title IX (1) which in some cases will lead to increased costs. Not to mention we have, you guessed it, a Title IX coordinator at every university that has to comply with Title IX who probably makes $50,000 - $100,000. If you think about other programs at universities, you’ll see quite the glut of administrators.

https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-titl... (1)

The US education system is really just screwed up by free, guaranteed government loans. If we just made loans dischargeable then most of our issues would go away overnight. The issue you have here though is that we are concerned about access to affording college for those who have to take out loans, but this route we have just makes college increasingly unaffordable. It’s a viscous cycle. I think stopping it is the way forward.

Most likely sports are going away at US universities. Big football programs will stick around though because the make a killing and people generally love them. Men’s basketball too because it’s relatively affordable. For reference, as I’m watching Bloomberg there was a report that came out suggesting star quarterbacks at major Us football programs at the collegiate level should be compensated at around $2.4 million dollars. We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though. Kind of sad since these are also used as Olympic training programs. But maybe we will change how we do things. I think the US will start losing a lot of sports talent though because the infrastructure isn’t there outside of the university system.

Afaik, only few super winning sports programs are earning. The rest of them costs money.

Probably 20-30 I’d say safely make money. For the others, it depends on how much it costs. Like if they are in the whole $100,000/year they could instead fire an administrator, or ask alumni for donations.

I have to think most universities aren’t losing too much money or they’d cancel the sport already, but I think with COVID-19 this is going to happen across sports in college anyway,

Yes, most lose money and average losses are projected to increase. Here’s an NCAA study: http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/growth...

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though

Universities in Australia generally have sports clubs where students play sport at an amateur/non-professional level. And that can even involve a representative team that plays the sport with students from other universities, even a handful of sports scholarships for promising athletes. That doesn’t cost the university that much at all, because unlike many American universities they are not trying to field a professional level team, just provide students with a recreational break from their studies, some exercise and socialising

> We won’t have a men’s rowing team, or women’s volleyball anymore though.

Why not? Can't they be funded in the same way as intra-mural sports i.e. by the athletes?

Title IX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX#Equity_in_athletics) has pretty broadly been interpreted as meaning equal funding. So scholarships you allocate to men's football needs to be equally funded in women's scholarships. IDK what the OP is talking about, beacuse there's no way the status quo changes until Title IX is repealed.

Equal funding, yes, but not necessarily to the same sports. They're allowed to take into account interest and participation. Otherwise, wouldn't we see million-dollar coaches for women's college football teams too? (I actually don't know of any women's college football teams, for that matter)

I never said equal sports; but pretty much any women's sport doesn't draw in enough ticket sales to justify its existence based on profits alone.

Almost no college sports, men's or women's, are profitable. I don't understand what you're trying to say.

>had no sport facilities whatsoever, not even a soccer field. It also had no dormitories, canteens, no fancy library, sport teams etc.

Sports teams and dorms are no where near the top of the ticket of University expenses. Many of the Ivies hardly invest in sports and still come with a 60k ticket.

American private universities are more expensive because American universities hire more administrative faculty and pay them more. That’s largely where the money is going.

Ticket price has nothing to do with budget. The schools have endowments and scholarship for rich students to pay more while poor students pay less.

> Many of the Ivies hardly invest in sports and still come with a 60k ticket

Believe it or not, at some of those Ivies, the cost per student exceeds $70k/yr, and is covered by overhead on grants, endowment, and other donations.

One theory goes that the whole "College ranking" apparatus has created a "race to the most affluent" situation, since high tuition costs have no negative effect on a College's ranking, and if you don't spend on facilities and things to up your ranking, then you'll lose customers to the competitor who does.

Aren't college rankings mostly using the bullshit "citation" metric, for which researchers optimize by forming citation rings? [1]

[1] not to mention self-citations, which is probably half of all citations in the US vs roughly 1/4th of them in most other places: https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?order=au&ord=desc*

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers.
That is a supposition that proves to be false. The same happens for health care. To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.
Also, I would like to notice, that for European tax-payers it is an investment. That money spend in education brings back way more money that what the original cost was. So, to just talk about "cost" misses the point.
> bouncing in and out, not bothering to finish it or prolonging it till their thirties, etc.
Not true. I have never been in a classroom where anyone was above thirty, probably no one was over their 25 anniversary.
But, that is my personal experience. Can you provide some data about that? I have not been able to find any statistics to confirm your statement.

Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.

Americans are over 300 million people, and like Europe we are not homogenous.
And many Americans believe European healthcare, education, and infrastructure are far superior to the U.S.
The problem is that despite Europe being far more efficient at health, education, and infrastructure spending it also has a wide range of policies. So it's difficult to determine which policies are driving the increase in efficiency and which aren't.

There’s no such thing as “European healthcare”. European countries (and I’m going to ignore Brexit and include the UK) approach provision of healthcare in a unique way. For example, the UK has the NHS, Switzerland has insurance mandates, and France has strict regulation of private insurance companies.

Yeah this was my point.

Yet all of Europe has one thing in common: people don't go bankrupt over surgeries because 99.99% of people have an insurance.

What does homogeneity have to do with anything?

>Americans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that the way they do things is not the best. It's incredible to watch from outside.
Treats Americans like they all have the same beliefs, i.e. homogenous.

Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China, apart from a few odd balls like Spotify. Different places optimize for different things, for better and worse.

Europe is a collection of small countries. It's not coincidence that the economic powerhouse of Europe, Germany, is the most populated country. And since this is going quite off topic here is some wild idea: let's keep just a fraction of the current universities, like say 5 or 10%, force talent in Europe to concentrate in a few places, force mixing across nations. Actually this is already encouraged somehow but let's be more brutal. Just thinking out loud maybe an stupid idea.

Whose fault is it that Europe has many small countries instead of being dominated by Germany the?
If the EU hadn't stopped its continent-scale genocidal domination, it could be on par with USA and China for linguiatic and economic unity.

> Europeans are utterly unable to create new global enterprises at the rate of America and China,
Having a homogeneous, single-language, single market of 350 million, and 1.4 billion people, respectively, is an enormous competitive advantage that Europe cannot replicate, without doing away with sovereignty and brainwashing ~80% of its population.
And despite all that, the quality of life of the average European is pretty good.

Counterpoint - Israel. Tiny country, unique language, way more success in tech and VC per capita than Europe.

And how much success does it have making things sold to consumers? (Which is where the common market is most important.)
I don't think I have a single thing in my home made by an Israeli brand (And I don't use Waze, and either way, it's Google's now). I have quite a few European-branded items, though.

Please refrain from nationalist slander. It's unproductive and against site rules.

Europeans are absolutely, utterly, unable to imagine that things they pay a percentage of all income earned, over their entire life, are not free. It's incredible to watch from outside.

CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU and we get none of the benefits.

> CAs tax rate when you factor in federal tax is comparable to the EU
Nominal rates might be, but tax burden is not. California tax burden is well under 15% GDP, and federal collections in the state are a tiny bit higher than state tax revenues, together still under 30% tax burden. EU overall tax burden is over 40% of GDP.

How do these numbers look when you count health care/insurance cost for CA instead of only for EU?

Count school fees and student debt too - public schools in most of the EU are good enough that you don’t have to go private the way the US does.

You don't need to go private in the US, either, that's largely a status display and a mechanism for non-educational social benefits more than an actual educational benefit; like the difference between outcomes in different public schools outcomes, the vast majority of difference between education outcomes in private and public schools is explained by factors outside of the school attended that determine educational outcomes (socioeconomic status, parental educational attainment, engaged parenting, etc.)

> How do these numbers look when you count health care/insurance cost for CA instead of only for EU?
Then you are counting the cost of the thing you are complaining about not getting for your supposedly-equivalent taxes in order to try to justify the claim that the taxes are equal.

30% federal plus 15% state is also higher than 40%, isn‘t it?

GP is saying 15% state plus 15+epsilon% federal < 40%

I agree, that state is a mess. I happen to live in state with low taxes and affordable school.
Perhaps the european model is better overall, or perhaps there are other complications. Regardless, the debate is not "free" vs "pay private companies". Both models have costs and benefits.

Which state is this? Just curious. Most of us in the Bay Area are here due to our jobs, not because we love the place.

I think they are well able to image that, but it's paid as part of income taxes so the hit when they're not earning isn't as catastrophic.
Also, consider that EU tax collection is comparable (and often lower) than US tax collection, despite not EU not having to separately pay for education and health...

I don't disagree. I am not making a judgement of which is better overall, just that neither alternative is free, or even close to that.

When you consider the totality of costs, inside and outside taxes, European healthcare and education is significantly cheaper for comparable or better outcomes.

See other comments. That may be the case, but it's wrong to frame it as "free" vs "paid".

I'm not framing it as free vs paid. I'm framing it as public vs private. The public sector just does some things better.
No one in Europe is under the illusion that public services are free. This is a complete strawman. But they are much more cost-effective than the alternative, a lot of the time, and provide universal services to everyone and help maintain the social fabric of a society.

> Also, I would like to notice, that for European tax-payers it is an investment. That money spend in education brings back way more money that what the original cost was. So, to just talk about "cost" misses the point.
How do they know this is the case at the margin? The analyses I've seen of this is usually [benefits of education] = [# of college grads] * ([avg. college grad salary] -[avg highschool grad salary])
Which has two large fundamental issues. One that college grads are differently from highschool grads in ways besides education, and probably the people most likely to go to college are the ones that would benefit from it the most.
Not to mention several posts have talked about how much better educated Europeans are despite the U.S. spending significantly more money on education than any large European country.

The Swedish report "Education and Economic Development - What does empirical research show about casual inter-relationships?" https://www.regeringen.se/rapporter/2005/12/ess-20054/ asks a similar question and starts its conclusions as follows:
"Our results are potentially contradictory. On the one hand, we have shown that the best studies which used variations in education between countries and regions – here we consider recent studies to be more reliable – indicate that there are no strong external effects from education. On the other hand, we have pointed out that there is strong evidence that education leads to improved health and life expectancy, politically more active citizens, lower crime and possibly that the children of educated persons become more productive. One explanation for these seemingly contradictory results may be that the favourable effects of education are not sufficiently strong to have an impact on economic development. It is also possible that the traditional measure of GDP is too narrow (and perhaps insufficiently stable) to capture the favourable effects."

> That is a supposition that proves to be false.
To date, that may be true. But give it a few decades. With the GI bill and the immediate post-war boom the US is arguably ahead of Europe in terms of the "college access for all" mindset, and cost of college only really became near the turn of the millenium (note that college debt is a "millenial" issue) and unbearable around 2005-2010 or so; so US colleges have had a bit more time to hone the fine art of rent-seeking.

> To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.
There is a major flaw in this argument: mixing incentive with potential. Yes, governments have the potential to be more efficient due to scale, but there is no incentive to do it. Smaller for profit institutions don't have the economy of scale, but have the incentive to be very efficient. In the end, private institutions need to be extremely efficient to compete with the free state colleges in Europe, while free state colleges have zero motivation to improve and compete, their money is a given.

> while free state colleges have zero motivation to improve and compete
Couldn't this argument be extended also to primary schools? Shouldn't they too be profit-maximizing businesses? Or are they already?

This would be a valid argument if the only incentive for human action was money. Since we know that to be false makes your argument invalid.

>To have a centralized state sponsored education or health care system allows it to be more efficient that smaller for profit institutions that have incentives to increase cost to the students as their profit depends on that.
An institution whose survival depends on profits is incentivized to...reduce costs, not increase them. All profits are, are the difference between what is consumed and what is produced. Either your argument is: institutions who produce more than they consume are bad or a service provider ("centralized state education") can be granted a monopoly to the service and will, more efficiently, produce the service. Typically monopolies charge monopoly prices (bad for everyone except the monopolist), if the granted monopoly has its prices legislated to address these concerns (the case in Europe), it must sacrifice either on {cost, quality, quantity, quickness of delivery} of the product.
If you really do think that monopolized industries outperform markets with "wasteful profits" you might study the history of the CCCP and democratic welfare states.
The market manipulation that started in US education is a result of price fixing -- the price of education is a molested price: service purchasers don't select on electing a provider based on cost because that market price has been pushed up by government-secured debt to which a party cannot default on (otherwise know as selling yourself into slavery). Since producers have less competition on price, they compete on quality, quantity, and quickness. It's the same issue that resulted in the FAA price-setting airline tickets - airlines couldn't compete on cost so they had an ever increase set of luxury options to attract customers.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_deregulation#Civil_Aer...
https://fee.org/articles/the-effects-of-airline-regulation/

> bouncing in and out, not bothering to finish it or prolonging it till their thirties
Very rare. Mostly because school is not paying you unless your results are super great. Meaning, if you want to eat and live inside, you need money.

Not exactly true. When parents pay your rent and food and University is free some have little incentive to take it seriously.

The parents who do that till yoir 30ties who simtaneously insist on you being formally student at university are rare. Either they cut you off or are fine paying you even if you dont study.
And frankly, my impression is not that American students take school more seriously in average. They dont seem to, the paying money effect seems to be primary demanding more support and stufd from school. Not working more.
If nothing else, the college experience where massive focus is on fun, parties, extracurricular acrivities, fraternities, sorrorities, networking, fun again and sport tend to be American focus.

> The cost is low for the student but it's pretty high for the taxpayers.
Well, not really. In France for example, the cost per student per year looks like the following:
* Classe preparatoire (math & physic 2 years course to prepare ranked for Engineering schools): ~15K euros per student per year
* Engineering Schools: 10 to 25K depending on the specialty, with a few prestigious schools (Centrale Paris, Polytechnique, Mines de Paris, etc) in the 30 to 60K bracket.
* Literacy student in university: 5 to 7K
* Math or Physic student in university: 10 to 15K
* Business School: 15 to 20K
However, keep in mind this figures don't include housing.
Apart from Business schools and less prestigious engineering schools, most of these are public schools with low tuition fees for students (even if these are slowly increasing, Centrale Paris raised them to 3.5K recently for example).
Also, cost apart, having public schools with low/no tuition fees helps keeping open opportunities for everybody, and mitigate social and economic aspects.
It reduces the "my parents don't have the money to allow me to go through university" or "do I really want I 200K lawn from the start of my professional life?" aspects.
It's just better at giving more equal opportunities to every students, minimizing somewhat factors that are outside of their control like the socioeconomic background of their parents.
Don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect and these factors still play an important role, but at least it's an effort in the right direction.

Are Universities in Europe really that high quality? Certainly some are, but as a parent researching schools I have been really surprised by how many European colleges are a bit mediocre by the criteria I was evaluating. For example, Spain and Italy have some of the oldest colleges in the world. But in many ways there are four or five colleges in California that are better, four or five colleges in Texas, and across the US many many colleges than any college in those countries.
I know a lot of people will disagree because there are so many ways to compare colleges. But what I look for is the strength of the top faculty (not necessarily the teachers but who you might work with as you get more advanced), the facilities, the quality of the research that comes out of that University. The US really has an impressive number of schools that attract top faculty from around the world and produce world class research in many fields.
A lot of European colleges seem to give you a good education. But if you really wanted to be an expert in something, or just get the experience of working with top people, it is amazing how relatively strong US colleges are.
I know I am making a lot of generalizations, perhaps unfairly. So if you disagree or see it a different way please correct me. This is something I am really trying to learn about.

Speaking as a dual US/Italian citizen there are some things I would add to your picture (which surprised me when I first learned them). I should also add, my picture is a bit dated since I last looked at this in the early 2000's but a lot of this is still true:
US vs Italian "high school"
- Finishing Italian secondary education is most equivalent to US high school + at least the first year of most US universities
- I believe this is true for most major European countries and boils down to the expectations for students being higher in Europe than in the US
US vs Italian universities
- It's true that Italian university is free
- It's also true that "anyone" can attend
- However, there is a mandatory "advancement" exam at the end of the first year that MOST (~70% in the early 2000's) students fail which bars them from continuing
- The above is what sometimes skews comparisons between US and Italian colleges
- To complete university, you are required to do a "thesis" and then defend it. Historically, this was done orally in front of a panel
- There is also the effect that because university is free and housing is usually paid for by parents, taking 5+ years to finish is both normal and somewhat socially acceptable (this is more of an interesting side bar)
Long story short, this means the Italian university is really Sophomore year of an American university plus some graduate level work. A good example of this is how there is(was?) no separate law school in Italy since you are essentially doing advanced level courses in "undergrad".
Another comparison: at the time (early 2000s) multiple people in senior level positions in European companies mentioned to me that in their opinion, having an MBA from a top US school was equivalent to a degree from a top Italian economics school like Bocconi University. Since most US companies thought of the MBA as the "advanced" degree, they weighed it more heavily so it did "matter" in that sense but not from an education only perspective.

“ Another comparison: at the time (early 2000s) multiple people in senior level positions in European companies mentioned to me that in their opinion, having an MBA from a top US school was equivalent to a degree from a top Italian economics school like Bocconi University”
HBS and GSB have much more brand value than Bocconi university. Whether the economics education you get is on par is debatable but it’s clear one of the selling points of an elite US MBA is the signaling.
I’m skeptical of the claim that Bocconi university has anywhere near the signaling effect of HBS/GSB.

Bocconi might have more signaling value to European or Italian companies perhaps, but American companies have European companies thoroughly beat in terms of number, size, power, global influence, etc. One of the "benefits" of valuing capitalism as much as we have is that the opinion of American company management carries quite a bit more weight around the world, and they would pick harvard over bocconi any day.

US high school education is not uniform throughout the country. Are you going by some states' requirements here or are you assuming some amount of AP credits?

Well that indeed is a problem.
I graduated Engineering from an Italian university and I must say much of my curriculum consisted of mind-bending exercises meant to keep us busy and out of the way. The currency we lacked most was context, insight, and an understanding of why some particular detail mattered.
I do think that of all that was thrown at me, something stuck after all; but admittedly the most insightful and profound opportunities that I missed are to be blamed on me, and on the precious little attention to students that the scarce funding allowed for.

I think the US collages you say are stronger than European ones just boils down to money.
It's amazing how having more money just buys you more and better facilities and teaching talent, not to mention the US Gov. investing far more into STEM R&D (for defense) than Europe plus all that sweet private R&D money from all the fortune 500 companies.
It all ads up in the end.

Also admissions criteria. Italian colleges are known for having little control over who they admit (and graduate).
Almost all students attend a local university, often without leaving the house. The universities are essentially required to admit (and graduate) large numbers of locals.

At least in Germany research is often done by e.g. Max Planck or Fraunhofer Society. These are public research organizations which are practically part of the universities but their research output is not counted in rankings.

> Are Universities in Europe really that high quality?
Anecdote from a friend studying biochemistry in Milan, but mind-blowing. Apparently, he was the only one in his graduate class to know how to use a pipette and other basic lab equipment. Until that point, their training had been purely theoretical.
There are a lot of other problems in a similar vein. But the quality of American high-access, high-quality higher education from a practical perspective is a solid counterpoint to the European model of high-access, low-cost.

That's weird, basic glassware use including pipette is part of the national final grading in The Netherlands, I guess there's differences across the EU.

Reminds me of the Feynman story where he goes to Brazil. May be a southern/latin Europe thing?
https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

My issue with the rankings is how they emphasise research. Why would it matter to an undergraduate how highly decorated his prof is? We used to joke that the more titles a guy had, the worse he was at teaching. I think this is true because the guys with the titles have moved on to managing research and finding funding, rather than having daily tasks to do with the research.
I went to a very well known university that's known for giving tutorials with just a couple of students, and this always seemed to be the case. Top prof = doesn't have time or motivation to teach.
If you look at it, everything you do in undergrad is fairly well known anyway. There's no reason why a course at one uni would be much different from another, the fields have decided long ago what is and isn't important.
What might affect your kid is what peers they end up with. If you go to a top uni, people are used to doing well and tend to come from backgrounds that allow them to succeed.

This depends whether you go to college to be taught or you go to college to network and get involved in research.

One of the problems that universities need to contend with is that they’re simultaneously meant to be research institutions and educational institutions. I think universities tend to do better if they focus on research first and let that lead their (comparatively smaller) teaching responsibilities.

Well, a few things:
1. Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.
2. I think what you're saying is roughly correct, but would warn that you can very easily go way too far in the other direction. For example, check out some of the smaller colleges and state branch campuses launching data science departments staffed entirely by non-stats/non-CS faculty who have 0 days of work experience. Mostly because their math courses are under-subscribed and they've gotta do something with those bodies. The quality of these programs is about what you'd expect. So, you don't need top-tier faculty. However, you do need faculty who have at least a relevant terminal degree and/or significant work experience. Otherwise, it's the blind leading the blind.
3. Curriculum does vary radically between universities! C.f., Stanford and a random branch campus of a state school.
4. As you noted, cohorts can also vary even more radically.

> Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.
I just want to point out for any newer undergrads that might be reading that research is really one of the best things you can do during your time at school. Even if you don't plan on going into academia, it looks great on a resume and professors are often have industry connections that can get you an internship easily.

A few caveats to be aware of: more scrutinizing employers will recognize that undergraduate research at the same university you attend is usually a gimme. And at my large state school was often used for cheap labor that grad students didn't want to do.

It’s the project output, the faculty connection, and conference attendance. The line on the resume doesn’t matter.

For the large amount of students who don't go on to get PhDs, why would that matter?

A good rec from a strong researcher carries weight. Likely lots of execs, managers, and senior engineers in the ranks of their academic siblings, old grad school friends, collaborators, former students, etc.
It’ll add a band or at least max out comp in the existing one if the right person gives the right rec.
And that’s assuming the undergrad research project was totally irrelevant to the position. New grads who can contribute to cutting edge stuff are super hard to find and super cheap relatively speaking. Usually your options are super expensive engineers or the few phds who decide to go into engineering instead of research.
I’ve seen undergrads sign in the 3s and 4s when their research aligns perfectly with the advertised position, cause the alternative is often buying the kid out of his startup a year later.

Your chances of landing a job in a research lab in undergrad probably doesn’t correlate with top research output. People who have armies of phds and post docs don’t have time for undergrads.
I spent my last 2 years of uni in a research lab and got some stuff published. Im pretty sure i got this opportunity because i went to a school with a dearth of grad students and i showed some initiative in an intro class for what became my minor.

1. Research is part of the pedagogy. Getting involved in a research lab as an undergraduate is a great way to land in the top 5-10 percentile.
5-10 percentile in what? Grades? Amount of papers? Grades generally don't speak to someone's practical ability on whatever job they choose after college. For example, one's ability to learn stoichiometry in a time-constrained environment hardly implies they'll be a great chemist.
Papers also come cheap and there are already enough out there of insignificant value or dubious quality (a good indicator might be the journal/conferences most undergraduate papers are submitted and accepted to).
As others have said, just because a teacher is skilled doesn't mean they are skilled at teaching. To your second point, I've once had professors who had significant achievements on their resume not be able to explain the basics of their field in a coherent way. In a case like that, those professors are equivalent to lecturers who have 0 days of "work experience" (which seems like a weird term to use for what I read from your comment as "research")

First Outcomes. So, either total comp or other relevant metric. Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate.
You seem to simply not understand the rest of the comment. The “or” is a branch with qualified professors of the practice on one side. It’s ok to not have any research experience as a professor, but then you better have a strong track record in industry. Having no relevant research AND no relevant industry expertise is the problem. One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate.
High quality researchers almost by definition do have several years of experience — “research scientist” is a job. One that pays better than most, even. 200K total comp starting in CS - CMU and Mit publish data. Just because you’re not building crud apps or cleaning up PDFs all day doesn’t mean you don’t have experience in a marketable skill.
I know a lot of cs phds. 100% who are current faculty either spent time in industry or had mid 6 figure offers they turned down for professorships.

"Feel free to disagree, but I have tons of data so I’m not even going to debate."
Why say you have tons of data and not just post it? If there's tons of it, it should be easy to find and post one link showing direct correlations between undergrads in research earning in the 5-10 percentile.
It's funny how you can say "One or the other usually suffices. Yes, usually. Spare me your anecdata about that one professor you still hate." when whatever evidence you have to support your "Yes, usually" is probably exactly that. When I was referring to "work experience" I was emphasizing the point that there's the "work experience" being referred to still doesn't factor in teaching which is a large part of what the job should entail.
And a 200k starting salary isn't too impressive when the time taken to get a PhD can be used to get that salary in the industry. 5+ year senior engineers can be seen getting 200+ total compensation on levels.fyi and I personally know people who make beyond that with even less experience than that.
What I'm saying is that the school system is broken and isn't structured to incentivize good teaching. Some hiring processes for university staffs don't even take it into account even when some of their salaries and facilities are paid by students. If you want your kid to actually learn something then I'd suggest vetting colleges by other metrics that actually indicate something about the quality of education he'll be receiving and not the quality of education his lecturers received.

> Why say you have tons of data and not just post it?
For the same reason you don't you dump your employer's IP whenever some internet rando asks for proof: it's not mine to give.
There are many paths to a happy early career. Getting involved in undergraduate research is one of them. There are other paths too.
tbh I'm not even sure what your point is anymore. You clearly have some sort of weird chip on your shoulder re: undergrad research. Sorry for your bad experience or whatever.

I went to a public university with a good engineering program. After freshman year I took most of the Edx circuits course from MIT to see what the ivy league education advantage would be. It was pretty much the exact same topics and lectures. I thought the MIT lecturer did a slightly better job and I'm sure all the students were smarter than me, but I feel like I learned the same things for a fraction of the cost.

Top European universities provide pretty good education pre-PhD level, in many cases the first 3-5 years in European schools is superior and more focused than the equivalent US curriculum. The first 1 or 2 years in US universities seem spent filling the gaps left by a mediocre High School education.
US universities are then miles ahead of most European schools in their PhD programs bare a few exceptions (Oxford, Cambridge, ETH...).

PhD programs in the US and elsewhere are often not directly comparable. Doing a PhD in the US typically involves 1-3 years still taking classes. Doing one in the UK means starting thesis-forming research immediately. Not really the same thing at all.

Most programs I've seen have students starting research immediately. Sometimes you might have a few months of rotations through different groups.

Every friend I have (or ex-wife :) with a US PhD (this spans physics, history, computer science, physiology, geology) did classes for the first 2 years (roughly).

You can do both at the same time.

US and UK degrees in general are not comparable.

Uk CS PhD: spend one year figuring out what you are doing, 1/1.5 years doing research. 1 year writing up. Thats the summary I've gotten from several faculty.
On top of that, you have to go do a few postdocs if you want to do academia.(maybe a good thing, but not necessary in hot areas in the US for PhDs from highly ranked schools)
There's a reason the UK is trying to go over to centers for doctoral training and 5 year PhDs. Yes, in those and the US system, you spend 2 years taking classes. But in that time you are also getting spun up and then doing research.

Uk is the outlier here.

Not compared to northwestern europe. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany are similar (not the same - similar). Scandinavia probably as well, but i don't have experience there.

In no serious field does one do a PhD in 3 years in Germany.

non-US PhD programs typically require you have a masters. In the US that is not a requirement, hence the course work. If you are a more mature student coming in (e.g. have a masters) the course work is often a straightforward refresher and you can start doing research when you aren't doing classwork.

US college isn't longer because it's remedial, it's because it has more out of major liberal arts required courses.
There are a lot of remedial classes at US colleges, but those students wouldn't be in college at all in Europe.

This is true. There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US. For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology. These were all incredibly easy and I found the course material was what I was used to as a freshman in highschool (no I'm not exaggerating). So those classes weren't even remedial, but felt like a joke. Please note that I'm not saying all liberal arts classes are a waste, but I think all the 101 classes are pretty bad. The fact that people were complaining and struggling to make a C was mind boggling. The university says they're there to make you well rounded, but we all know it's an excuse to charge more money. The human brain can only take so many technical courses at the same time as well, so it's not like I could cram in another mathematics or engineering course and stay sane. Instead of giving you a break and getting to use that time to study, you have to take the useless other classes which costs more money.

The one that got under my craw was when I went to see an academic advisor with one or two semesters left.
I had been fastidious about covering all the specified requirements, and my proposed course-load covered the remainder. Except apparently you needed 128 total hours, and actually covering the requirements of the programme left you six short. They designed the timetable assuming that people would bounce between majors or otherwise load up on go-nowhere electives, and the advisor basically said I could take underwater basket weaving and it would count for the gap.
I ended up taking a CLEP exam a few weeks later to claim the equivalent credits of several semesters worth of Spanish classes.

I had a colleague who told me he went to a university in Florida. I asked him what did he study there, and he said "Golf".

> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US
Only in a liberal arts program. In an engineering program, there is almost none. Other programs may fall in between. When I was at UC Davis (which was before Biological Sciences was its own college), the non-major liberal arts course load went (both in general, and where multiple colleges had the same degree program, between those specific programs) College of Letters and Science > College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences > College of Engineering.
> For example, my engineering degree required 3 English classes, psychology, fine arts, and sociology.
That's, what, semester and a half all told? That's an odd basis for claiming “a lot”.
> The university says they're there to make you well rounded, but we all know it's an excuse to charge more money.
No, if they wanted an excuse to charge you more money they'd drop the liberal arts requirement, keep the length of the program constant, and add more engineering courses, whose faculty are much higher paid, and keep the same tuition to cost ratio.

I've looked at many programs and most schools claim that they want students to be "well rounded". I think that is pretty common and a scam, but that's just my opinion.
We may have a difference of opinions here, but six classes that I have no actual need for IS a lot to me. I still had to show up for those classes, listen to the instructors, do homework, buy stupid textbooks, and briefly study for the tests even though they were easy. That cost money that was the equivalent of me flushing it down the toilet, but more importantly, robbed me of additional time I could have spent studying for my thermodynamics, electronics, and differential equations classes (things that I was struggling in and I was intentionally paying good money to learn) or sleeping or actually getting to spend time with my fiance.

Curious what university you attended. From my experience the engineering liberal arts courses were still engineering focused. E.g. English was about writing ieee formatted papers.
I had an engineering ethics course where we discussed sensitive issues such as a medical radiology device which accidentally delivered 10x the dose due to sticky keyboard keys.

IEEE format would've been nice. Engineering ethics is required for ABET accreditation in the US, so we all probably had something similar.

> There are a lot of pointless liberal arts classes for a STEM degree in the US.
I understand, this was my outlook when I left school too, but I changed my mind about that.
It took me maybe 5 years of work experience before I realized that no matter how "technically" smart I was, my technical skills were worth shit if I couldn't communicate better with my teammates. My writing was poor, I couldn't explain myself concisely, I could get flustered when someone didn't understand a point that looked straightforward to me... I had no notion of how I might go about convincing someone to do something I needed, especially someone who wasn't working in the same field as me or didn't have the same educational background. Not saying I'm a rockstar at this either now, but at least I understand the benefits of well-roundedness in a way that I didn't see earlier in my career.
I also see this with some of my younger colleagues now, who seem to care about technical output and cranking out smart stuff, but they're having problems communicating or taking feedback, and it's really clamping their future professional opportunities until they work on that...
Anyway - I don't mean this to disclaim your experience of feeling like you were wasting your time, and maybe the classes weren't the right level for you, just pointing out that at least for some people in the tech field, lack of skills in the humanities dept eventually prevents their professional advancement, hence it's not necessarily a waste of time for everyone to take classes outside of their major even if they're studying in a STEM field...

I think he means there are classes that really are pointless. They're basically adult babysitting.
I found quite a few interesting history/culture/etc classes and enrolled in them. They had no prerequisites, but offered engaging material. A week in I notice... these classes don't fulfill my general education requirements--only the most fundamental, non-challenging classes do.
So I switch from classes with 15-20 students that would've involved long discussions, some research, and actual thinking, into lectures of 150 students and only 3 multiple choice tests in the entire semester.
I went to every class. Never was I challenged. They were very much "here are facts. Memorize these for the tests" classes and nothing more. Very surface level stuff. Not even any questions from the professor, and oftentimes if students asked questions, the professors would tell them to ask later because they're short on time. Just a waste of time and money.

Yep, this is what I was getting at. Also, the test facts are part of a study guide literally telling you what is on the test and people still fail.

I've been out of school for a decade now and would agree that communication is vital. However, that isn't learned via English Literature, psychology, sociology, art history...etc. Public speaking, writing descriptive emails and so on require practice, literacy, and putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Something like Toastmasters in class form would've been nice.

None of what you identified are covered in these useless classes. In my undergrad we had a sociology course that when over how people have different roles in life (family head, care giver, money maker, etc). It was all stupid obvious stuff without any non-technical merit.
If only those mandatory liberal arts classes taught things as useful as communicating and writing...

Spain and Italy have a reputation for crappy universities. Italy especially.

It may very well be the that the 10 best universities are in the USA so if you want your kid in the best university rather than sending them to Europe that might be the way to go.
That doesn't mean that in general the quality of education, for the general public in Europe would not be higher.
It's a bit like the US healthcare system, the best in the world, but only for those who can afford it.

I always find it a little suspicious that all the university rankings in English-speaking newspapers rate English-speaking unversities the highest.
That said, there are definitely opportunities in the USA that aren't available elsewhere.

> The quality of the research that comes out of that University
Research in continental Europe does not come from universities but mainly from research institutes, so I'm not sure what you are comparing here...

US is great for Masters levels and above, where there is indeed such a thing as a world-class specialists helping shape the next generation of experts.
If you're thinking about college though, that doesn't churn out experts. The material is well-known, and IMO it's more important to have great teachers available to answer your questions than to have world-class research experts on the brochure. Great teachers are also not everywhere, but they are in far higher abundance than the so-called "top faculty", and maybe good teaching doesn't even correlate very strongly with research brilliance.
Some of the classes in which I learned the most had teachers who were (I now see in retrospect) relatively middling postdoc folks, or long-tenured professors who didn't really have much more research "juice" in them... but they had a well constructed syllabus, were able to cleanly articulate concepts, give examples, give exercises, give encouragement, etc.
I've also taken classes with world-class researchers, and some of them were outstanding, while others had sloppy syllabus prep, didn't adequately coordinate with TA's, gave lectures that weren't engaging as they jumped into long solo calculations at the blackboard that they had trouble making their way out of... In short, they couldn't be bothered.
So I wouldn't generalize from my experience either, but I think that especially for college, teaching quality, and student body quality (peers are an important source of motivation) are more important than world-class research renown.
Working in tech in the US, I see enough high-performing European and Asian immigrants that I think it could be good for an American kids today to consider getting a degree from a school abroad for a fraction of what it would've cost them in the US.

The best math professor I had was atrocious at teaching. If not down right abusive.
Taught me how to ask the right questions. How to capture requirements and learn on my own.
Top Universities aren’t their to teach. They are their to empower you to teach yourself and explore deep in areas. While also learning the fundamentals that are necessary for this enablement.
That is drastically different than the average ranked schools.

> what I look for is the strength of the top faculty
I think most people getting doing normal undergraduate program rarely notice where the top factulty is strong and where it isn't. I sure didn't in the first years of an education. Every university has better and worse departments (those with some reputation for its research, and "others"). I have seen nothing that suggests that the undergraduate education given by staff at the less-known departmenmts is worse than the education given at the "good" ones.
Of course, if you want to get a PhD or even take an advanced undergrad or PhD-class in a 4th or 5th year at a university, you'll notice where the skilled academics are. But the vast majority of the education done at an university is in the basic undergraduate classes given to hundreds of students every semester. It's the quality of that I think is most important, and I'm going to argue that it's probably not dependent on the number of Nobel Prize medals in the department.

Europe educates people. The US let you believe your child can bring in his little league bat and get to play with the Yankees.
I'd be most surprised if the progress you make as a student was correlated to having the rock stars of the field in your school. In the age of the internet, if you're good and motivated you can work with pretty much anyone in the world.

Nonsense, there are a lot of universities in Europe to choose from that have been around for centuries with excellent reputations that also publish world class research, rake in nobel prices, attract foreign students & researchers, etc.
US universities tend to be better at marketing because their core business is separating their students from their cash and making them feel good about that. That does not automatically translate into a better academic performance. There are a lot of second and third rate institutions that are perhaps better at their marketing than actual academic performance. Arguably the smart move for a US school kid would be to opt for the life experience, language skills and education at a university abroad instead of opting into a mortage to get an education from some local college.

My degree was 5 years with professional Software Engineering accreditation (legal title in Portugal), and it had a level of data structures, systems programming, distributed computing, graphics and programming languages that I still find people missing out in online discussions.
So naturally there are bad ones as well, it is a matter of doing the research, and in Portugal's case, having the required grades to get in.

I haven't done a STEM education, but it seems to me like the quality of research output is dependent on the field, to start with. Second, doesn't it really only become relevant at the PhD level, not bachelor's or master's degrees? Seems to me like nothing precludes you from going for a good education in Europe and then getting good research opportunities in the US.

" Higher education for a lot of organizations is just an easy way to cut the application stack down"
This is an easy way to ensure you do not have a diverse workforce, or even the best people for the job

You completely missed the point. The author said pick two out of three. High quality, low cost, universality.
As you say, you can have high quality, and low cost. But European university isn’t as universal as north american universities are.

> You do not need a degree 30 years ago to do lots of jobs that now require one
This is part of the problem.
Stop demanding a formal degree for jobs, allow anyone who can do the job to do it, and much/some of these problems will go away.

The majority of people don't go to expensive private college for the degree , as that is available cheaper elsewhere. They go for the feeling of elitism.
Some of the worst money wasting colleges are the scam trade schools like University of "Phoenix".

University of Phoenix was founded and is based in Phoenix, Arizona, so if you want to put scare quotes on a part of it, maybe "University" of Phoenix is the better way. ;-)

I think their point is that most of the University of Phoenix's programs are online.

The time is past, when one could disparage online learning merely for being online.

I don't think that UoP is being disparaged -- it just sounds a bit odd to tie a virtual university to a physical place.
On the other hand, "University of 4Chan" doesn't have the same ring to it.

> They go for the feeling of elitism
it's not a feeling - it's real. Connections with other highly connected (and rich) people will give you more opportunities that merit alone won't give you.

>Stop demanding a formal degree for jobs, allow anyone who can do the job to do it, and much/some of these problems will go away.
It's a symptom of people needing more jobs than are available - if there's a massive labour shortage these unnecessary requirements will evaporate overnight, and if people stop needing to work to survive these unnecessary requirements will evaporate overnight.

Excellent observation. I expect this is one problem among many which would be solved by a UBI or some other form of guaranteed economic security.

I think it is more of a problem of inflation.
If you get 50 application is easy just to automatically remove the X that don't have a college degree.
Similarly to the way you might have a GPA cut off of some amount but they don't actually care what your degree was in.
In Ireland there are a lot of people who go on to do a Masters because when a large number of people have degrees it makes you more competitive. Anecdotal most my friends will tell you they use neither their undergrad nor masters in work life

I was mostly thinking of when lawmakers or regulators decree that to do job X you must have college degree Y.
As an employer with many resumes to choose between, you'll of course pick whoever you prefer.
Except if you're not allowed to hire them because they haven't paid a college for a document.

It's hard to know what exactly the job will be in a few years. But if a person has successfully completed years of study you know they have a lot of background knowledge which MIGHT become useful in the job as circumstances change.

Sure - as soon as we allow IQ and other such metrics to be valid for job-applications (I would love to just sort-by-IQ when filtering job and team applications). There most certainly is an over-abundance of individuals willing to work for the available spots, and we're artificially handicapping the methods by which the pool can be pruned. That's why we have leet-code type quizzes in tech, they're essentially proxies for memorization, IQ and determination. Consequently, degrees are a secondary proxy for the above 3 criteria, so no wonder employers have been relying on it.

How universal are they?

How uni are these unis?

> Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost.
And not universal. You do not go to a German university from a Realschule or a Hauptschule -- you go to Gymnasium, and if you succeed there, you can go to University.
Otherwise, there are professional and vocational tracks available.
University slots are limited as well -- you may have to hunt around for a university that has open space for you in your program of choice, or choose a different course of study.
Changing study programs is much more difficult than in the US.
I would be abundantly happy if we did this in the US, but the "everybody must go to college" crowd would have none of it.

As Portuguese living in Germany, with experience in other European countries as well, that tiered school system always pisses me off.
In those countries I have goten to meet clever individuals with university degree, that in Germany with their high school background would never had gotten the opportunity to attend university.

I have met plenty of absolute morons with university degrees.
University is, for most people, a massive waste of time and money.
Not because they are stupid, but because going to university does not further their life goals.
It certainly didn't for me.
University only one of many paths through life.
We need to stop treating it as the only option into which we force everybody.
Plenty of brilliant people go into skilled trades, or into professional tracks. There's a reason Germany still has such a robust manufacturing sector.
We would do well to follow this in the US.

Sure, but at the same time there are lots of clever people that missed the opportunity to actually go, due to artificial barriers that consider them too dumb for university.
Morons? There are morons everywhere.

What’s wrong with a clever person becoming a truly amazing welder? Or a dentist (professional tracks do not require university)?

Everything if that wasn't in their life goals.
Dentist requires university degree in many European countries by the way (4 years).

> Universities in Europe are generally high quality and low cost.
But they’re not universal and there’s nowhere near the level of handholding and support that’s common in US universities with high tuition, i.e. private ones. If you have a problem in a German university it’s on you to run around and solve it and if you can’t the administrators are quite likely to say “tough” if you tell them. Missed a deadline? Your problem, should have read the syllabus. Come back next year.

Is that really the argument? That high quality and low cost are only possible if students are responsible for solving problems? Sounds fine to me. Students solving problems is at least half the point of undergrad anyway.

From my experience at a German university, the administration is in reality very helpful and can be proactive once you reach out.
They won't come chase you if you evade them for anything short of criminal, fraudulent or unsafe behavior, though, and it'd surprise me to hear if that's the case in the US.

> If you have a problem in a German university it’s on you to run around and solve it and if you can’t the administrators are quite likely to say “tough” if you tell them. Missed a deadline? Your problem, should have read the syllabus. Come back next year.
They'll say that in all the private fancy US schools I've attended, too.

> Or how about breaking the degree monopoly with something like equivalent certification programs and let private companies fill the gap. Similar to what Google is doing with its certificate program they are rolling out.
This stuff has existed for years and there are probably thousands of "certification programs". Most of the time, they're deemed worthless.

It's worthless as a "certification program", but the actual knowledge is valuable
You need some way to get your foot in the door and prove your chops. Some bootcamps like Lambda school are doing a pretty good job about that

The real question is why schools like Khan Academy aren't accredited?
Why can't we have free online courses for everyone, where the only costs are the actual free market costs that go towards staff required for administration, courseware development, instructors, and test proctoring?
Why should a college degree from an online university cost a fortune, if the course material remains mostly unchanged from year to year? At the end of the day, all you need is the educational materials, someone who help guide you through them, and then a test to prove that you learned the material. Why isn't that good enough??

> staff required for administration, courseware development, instructors, and test proctoring
These costs are not exactly negligible, though they are much less than the prices charged by private 4-year colleges. The average community college tuition and fees is only $3400 [0]. That's fairly close to the "free market" cost of providing tutoring, creating new tests, test grading, and other administrative fees. So, I think the real reason is that there is not much of a market to be had since---if you don't need the signaling, research, or social aspects of a 4-year college---community colleges already offer an arguably superior product for what would be a similar price.
[0] https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/pay-for-college/college-c...

Yeah... essentially, I'm just wanting a high-quality online community college with accreditation.

Because this is all driven by initial post-university employment (and to some extent post-graduate degrees). Employers use university as a screen for jobs, and perceive candidate value based on university prestige. University prestige is based primarily on selectivity.
Accrediting Khan Academy (or Udacity, or whatever) won't change any of this process. Employers don't have an incentive to change their process right now, so in general students would not pick something like an online degree over traditional university.

But wouldn't the perception of the employers change over time if they discovered that the people with degrees from that online university were actually well educated?
Obviously, if the material and teaching sucked, or if cheating was rampant, that would tarnish the reputation, but the same could be said of virtually any educational institution.

Of course, if they ever had a reason to change. But they don't, because they don't really have a problem with supply of candidates. They have issues with selecting for quality, but adding tons of candidates with online degrees doesn't help them.
There are potential ways of addressing this, but they mainly involve the online university developing selection criteria just like elite colleges (e.g. everyone can access basic materials, but only certain X performers can access the premium version with company interviews; or they only admit X students per class). Otherwise the value of the degree is diluted and it has no more signaling power to employers. In addition, the online universities will likely attract less capable students, because for very strong students, top tier universities are still very much worth it.

Why do the employers get little marginal benefit selecting from a larger pool, but somehow the universities have no problem screening hundred of thousands of applications?

> By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy.
A lot of countries have been able to maintain high-quality, low-cost university systems. They all do it with a significant degree of government intervention. I can't think of a single one that has succeeded by letting the market solve this problem.

If you are talking about Europe, the catch is that they weed out those who shouldn't be there early. For example in Italy, everyone can go for the first year, but then you have to pass a continuation exam, that upwards of 50 to 70 % fail. Germany has a similar system with exams early in high school that separate what tier school you can go to (trade schools or universities). So sure, its "free/low cost" but and technically "universal", except for those who fail at the gate. Otherwise try your luck in the US where you can rack up massive debt to attend any for profit college with 90% acceptance rates and the peice of paper is accredited the same as any other college.

I don't understand why there isn't simply the option of making a lot more colleges. "High Quality, Low Cost, Pick 2" isn't how most markets work.

IMHO, because what colleges are selling is effectively a positional good[1], one valued specifically for how it ranks against other similar goods. They're selling the certification that "this person is in the n% percentile of employability".
And you generally can't just make more of a positional good. That's like, "why can't Louis Vuitton ramp up production so that everyone can have a LV handbag?"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good

Right, for example almost everyone in California can go to the state's cheap, accessible community colleges. But not everyone can go to UC Berkeley or UCLA.

The answer is we have UBI, and embrace the positional value going to 0. Just about everyone is already overqualified for the jobs that they do. It's a bullshit job economy.
Let's drive up the cost of labor, educate for non-job-related reasons, and see if the the two paths meet again in some vastly different economy.

Please tell anyone that is overqualified at their current job to contact me, about everyone in my company in IT is underqualified, many times incompetent because we don't compete on salaries with the FAANG companies paying 3-5x more.

> about everyone in my company in IT is underqualified
Downward spiral, the people who get stuff done get babied to death and decide to change jobs, the ones who are just along for the ride stay. Wash and repeat 3-4 times and you end up with a dysfunctional company.

I'm talking overqualified on paper---in terms of education and other credentials. Absolutely this doesn't translate into the brilliant coworkers everyone here moans about not having, but that that's due to a bunch of systemic things:
If:
- Jobs were less pointless
- School reward system wasn't all screwed up
- Jobs required more skills
People would be "smarter". Without that, of course y'all gonna feel like you're surrounded by smug idiots.

People say that, but it's not really true. Tuitions are lower-tier schools are also extremely high; the tuition break doesn't happen until you get out of accredited 4-year universities and into community colleges.

Could you clarify what that's responding to? I don't see the connection to my point.

If college were priced purely as a positional good, tuitions at lower-tier schools would be be sharply lower than those of upper-tier schools. In Illinois, SIU and NIU cost approximately as much as UIUC, the state flagship.

>If college were priced purely as a positional good, tuitions at lower-tier schools would be be sharply lower than those of upper-tier schools.
Price (to the buyer) is more than just tuition -- the more prestigious ones are more selective, which is effectively a higher price. It has to charge that higher "price" (selectivity) in order to maintain its prestige. And generally the correlation holds, between prestige and price, even if it's not perfect.
If there really is no difference between those colleges you listed, except that one degree is worth more but costs the same, then I agree I can't explain that.

Community colleges are accredited too.
People transfer to 4 year colleges with AA degrees all the time, even to high prestige colleges.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24344612 .
Essentially, the primary driver is states reducing funding to public institutions. (A reply to the linked comment shows how this transfers into private colleges costing more, but essentially consider that if UMass Boston ended up being more expensive than Harvard due to Massachusetts reducing tuition support, then Harvard would obviously be remiss if it didn't double its prices. This is not a knock on UMass Boston, an excellent institution that nonetheless does not carry the prestige factor of Harvard.).
So the problem is: 1) states are the only entities that can quickly (< a generation) create universities whose degrees broadly confer the benefits expected when purchasing a college degree, 2) states are cutting funding for higher ed. QED we are more likely to end up with fewer colleges in 10 years than even as many as we have now.

College's rising price could be as simple as transferring the economic surplus of the education, in terms of your future expected salary, to the institution. That literally happens through loans. For some people, as a great WSJ article noted, loans do work out.
That's all blowhards (not you) really mean by "high quality" anyway.
Nonetheless it is quite the puzzle, why there aren't more colleges.
Like Leon Black could afford, just by himself, to found not one, but five world class universities, instead of donating to Harvard, one for each of his children to be admitted to. And yet.
This was the way medical school quotas / exclusions for Jews were dealt with: new medical schools that didn't discriminate!
Maybe it's a little about money. Getting your kids a guaranteed Yale admit probably costs around $20m - then the legacy system can deal with the rest of your family. It's a lot more affordable than founding a school.
Still I don't think it's about money. There isn't some monopoly on schools or lack of spending. Historically, and in my personal belief, someone has to feel they stopped getting a fair deal from the system. Then there will be more schools.

We do, although they seem to obey a power law distribution in "prestige". California has 116 community colleges (serving 2 million students), 23 campuses of the California State University, and 9+ campuses of the University of California.

Community colleges and 4-year colleges aren't the same product. I'm asking why we don't simply have lots and lots more 4-year colleges, if the demand is so high that the prices can skyrocket the way they have.

Interesting. I'd guess it had partly to do with regulatory hurdles, accreditation and such. The other parts, acquiring the land, buildings, equipment, faculty are rather capital intensive. I suppose they could be rented at first.
Finally, that leaves the prestige angle.

California has more people than Canada yet Canada has more public Universities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Canada

>Universality, High Quality, Low Cost, choose two
Incorrect. Most of Europe as well as Canada spend less money, on average, per student as the US, have universal systems, and are (very) high quality.

If you are talking about Europe, the catch is that they weed out those who shouldn't be there early. For example in Italy, everyone can go for the first year, but then you have to pass a continuation exam, that upwards of 50 to 70 % fail. Germany has a similar system with exams early in high school that separate what tier school you can go to (trade schools or universities). As far as I know, once you take the test, your fate is sealed. So sure, its "free/low cost" but and technically "universal", except for those who fail at the gate. Otherwise try your luck in the US where you can rack up massive debt to attend any for profit college with 90% acceptance rates and the piece of paper is accredited the same as any other college.

Too many people are enrolling in College, and this is a problem. The end result in many cases has been lower the standards to get students to graduate. More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs. The Covid Pandemic has shown us what happens when you put all your manufacturing in one country.

People will naturally go towards trades and manufacturing once the present value of expected future cash flow reaches equilibrium with alternatives and damage to their body.
There’s a reason plumbers and electricians would rather their kid be a white collar worker.
I just had a former carpenter come over to do some work and saw me in running shorts and said he wished he could still do physical activities, but the years of carpentry work have ruined his joints. He was only upper 40s.

The area where I grew up was a mountain region where wood work was the main occupation of most men; even for men that worked in the forest cutting down trees such health problems were very rare, carpenters working in the shops in the village had no such problems. The guy that did the plumbing in my house when I built it was over 70 years old at that time and he was still working because he wanted to be active, even if he could retire at 60 years old by the local law. I find office workers having more health problems than people with some physical activity, sedentarism is a killer.

> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs.
To this, and as we're on hacker news; and bootcamps are proving it for web developers; a bachelor's degree often doesn't prepare students for jobs (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well)

> (and the larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc often come from corporate training just as well)
Ethics? Really? From corporations?
> and bootcamps are proving it for web developers;
And, not surprisingly, web developers make less on average than other software development positions.

> larger concepts, ethics, systems thinking, etc
These are what American universities are actually well equipped for.
It's common knowledge that if you graduate with a BS in some engineering topic, you won't have most of the practical skills necessary for your job --- or at least not from your curriculum. However, a good school will teach you how to analyze complicated problems from a number of different perspectives with both theoretical and practical tools. Moreover, all those liberal arts classes they make you take that people complain about will give you the social and cultural context necessary to understand ethical implications that might arise.
Sure, getting a BS from a top engineering school won't tell you the best way to design web pages in 2020, but it should make you a well rounded, capable engineer.

> More people need to be geared towards trades and manufacturing jobs.
The key is manufacturing jobs - that is what disappeared over the last half century, and most of those jobs are semi-skilled.
But there are no jobs. There never will be - unless the US completely stopped importing from China. They can't - because then people will go to wal-mart and see the price increase, and get mad. And that doesn't take into account automation and technology further squeezing the need for workers.

The "pick two" argument tends to hold weight if there's no way to execute anything better.
Innovation is finding ways to do things faster, better, and quite often (in the long run generally) cheaper. It's the nature of disruption.
For education.. it seems mighty suspicious that we can't create better ways of delivering curriculum that doesn't change often... but in social media we can pump out so much digital information of the latest happenings (or opinions/interpretations) that it can overwhelm the senses and brain and become fact.
But, what do non-academics know. And what do academics know about the capabilities and possibilities of tech.
The next year will be extremely interesting for experts and leaders to show, instead of tell or talk.

I 100% agree that the "pick two" only applies if you cannot setup and alternate system. Hence my recommendation to for certs to break the monopoly. I really think tech has yet to TRULY disrupt education.

> Colleges are now awash in money
It is not possible for me to overstate how very much this is not true at the college where I work, and at all colleges with which I have a personal connection.

It depends a lot on who you know and what department you're in. In 40 of 50 states the highest paid public employee is a sports coach...
https://fanbuzz.com/national/highest-paid-state-employees/

At many universities athletics is a major revenue driver. There is a very real financial incentive to have high performing athletic programs.

Is this revenue driven by athletics separate from tuition fees? Because if it isn't, that only confirms the hypothesis.

Yes, it comes from broadcast revenues, merchandise, ticket and concession sales, and donations brought in through the athletic department.

Is that true? When I researched this last time it turned out most athletic programs loose money.

It's true for football or basketball programs in the NCAA.

I think for most universities it's not a significant profit driver, but I bet it's great marketing for prospective students.

Most departments don't see it, but you also need to compare colleges to colleges of the 1900s, where most professors made VERY small salaries and campuses were spartan at best. Funds have increased tremendously

It’s probably similar to health care in that the amount of money entering the system may be increasing, but the growing costs of bureaucracy are consuming all of it and more.

Of course not. They ARE AWASH in income. They just figure out how to spend it fast. Fancy buildings, fancy retirement plans, outrageous administrative salaries.... For example the Chairman of UMASS Medical Center makes 2.3 million. The CEO of Harvard makes 9.25 million. How are these jobs an order of magnitude harder than the governor of Massachusetts. (salary 150K) Or harder than the US President (salary 400K). I cannot help but laugh when someone says that 'captains of industry take huge risks and therefore deserve handsome reimbursement". How is it risky when all you have to do is decide how much to raise tuition? Riskier than our soldiers who face AK47 rounds in the sandbox? (What does a marine make, again?) How can we afford to pay our teachers so little? People who literally hold the future of America in their hands?
And now with distance learning, tuitions have not decreased by an order of magnitude though the overhead should have.

I cannot stop you from believing things that are false, but I can only assert that they are false.

I worked as tech support at a major university in the US in the mid-90s in the College of Business Administration as an internship. The way it works is you get a budget. If you don't spend all of your budget, you get less budget next year. No department wants a lesser budget. This resulted in all professors, most who only use Word and Excel, to get $4000 brand new, top of the line Dells every year. I know, I had to set them up and deliver them.
This probably isn't how it works everywhere, but it's certainly the case in some places. This was a large public/state school.

It's not that extreme around here but if there is some money left over... You can be sure that it will be spent. It's not like management gets a bonus for not spending money.

There were a number of CIOs at Australian Unis who were done for contract fraud.

You can be more specific or provide some corrected numbers if something is false.

FWIW, both of those examples are not only the executives of a university, but also of a hospital system. The vast majority of college presidents make well under that, with a median in 2015 of 300k (https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publication...).

I have never heard this argument ("captains of industry take huge risks and therefore deserve handsome reimbursement"). What I have heard is that these people are paid market rate for their management skills because they could easily get a similar salary in other endeavors.

Then let those administration be hired elsewhere by the market. A university should not pay such a huge salary to administrators, somebody who is paid a lot less can do the same job. If it takes millions of dollars to hire an administrator at a university, you probably don't need that person. You could just as well hire a person who is willing to accept a smaller salary for the same job. We are talking about administrators who get paid millions for hardly doing anything... let them be hired by industry where they get more salary and hire someone cheaper.

Do you want to think the president of the US to be paid a fraction of GDP (like .1%)? Since technically he probably has at least that much impact. Comparing private and public salaries is silly. Hedge fund analysts make more than the governor of Mass, should they get a pay cut?

To be clear, the presidents of those institutions’ have a major goal of bringing in charitable contributions to those institutions. They are paid well in part because they bring a TON of money in.
But also, there are clearly power law effects here. Your claim is a little bit like looking at Jeff Bezos’s and Zuckerberg’s billions and concluding that all startup CEOs — including those without VC funding — are overpaid.

Haha, I had lunch with Dr. Collins a few times in grad school at Umass: he's not a bad guy, just a medical executive that could go make that money elsewhere. He is pretty talented as well :)

I guess the bottom line is, does he deliver the value of that salary?

It's impressive to see this simplistic "you get what you pay for, damn it" sort of argument appearing in a situation where clearly students don't get what they pay for at all.
It's easy to find example in the US past and in other countries where high general and specialized quality education is provided in a fairly low-cost fashion.

>>It's impressive to see this simplistic "you get what you pay for, damn it" sort of argument appearing in a situation where clearly students don't get what they pay for at all.
I'm not saying you get what you pay for, I'm saying you get what you vote for. The government needs to get the heck out of the loan market.
>>It's easy to find example in the US past and in other countries where high general and specialized quality education is provided in a fairly low-cost fashion.
If you are talking about Europe, the catch is that they weed out those who shouldn't be there early. For example in Italy, everyone can go for the first year, but then you have to pass a continuation exam, that upwards of 50 to 70 % fail. Germany has a similar system with exams early in high school that separate what tier school you can go to (trade schools or universities). So sure, its "free/low cost" but and technically "universal", except for those who fail at the gate. Otherwise try your luck in the US where you can rack up massive debt to attend any for profit college with 90% acceptance rates and the peice of paper is accredited the same as any other college. Plus, most Europeans want to finish in an American school because late game quality is light year beyond what you can get in Europe save for a few schools like Cambridge or Oxford, and maybe the Max Planck institute.

> By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy.
How is it, then, that most of Europe and many other countries seem to manage this just fine? The conflict between those parameters certainly doesn't seem inherent.

What does the choice of "High Quality, Low Cost" look like in practice? (Because I'm not seeing how to make that happen, other than "burying the actually high cost someplace where it's spread out and hard to see, so it looks like low cost".)

> burying the actually high cost someplace where it's spread out and hard to see, so it looks like low cost
"spread out" implies taxation, but something similar can be done via endowment.
For example, a college with an existing $100MM endowment can educate at least a few hundred students for free in perpetuity.
With a billion dollar endowment, a college can educate a couple thousand for free.
In fact, Berea College does exactly this: 1600 students, 1.2 billion endowment, and provides effectively free college to nearly every student. Ranks alongside places like Denison University. So, Low Cost (to consumer), High Quality, but definitely not Universal (there are only so many billion dollar endowments to go around).

Low cost, available to everyone: the quality goes down as they need more capacity for less pay.
High Quality, Available to everyone: Will cost a lot because we'd need a lot of high quality teachers, and attracting them will be expensive.
Low Cost, High Quality: Only the best will get accepted, and the colleges will make their money in other ways using the work the students provide (like how medical school research departments are big money-makers)

> Low cost, available to everyone: the quality goes down as they need more capacity for less pay.
A partial solution to this is to simply shrink the spread of services the college/university offers. eg they could simply offer education and training.

We had this. This was vocational schools. They were fantastic for most of the US. Focused entirely on just the skills you need for specific fields.
Hair, Mechanic, Electrician, Plumber, etc. And they would be the perfect vessels for re-training when certain industries shut down.
Interestingly enough: They were cheap and universal (because they were cheap).

elitism

Without government backed student loans for literally anyone who wants it, you suddenly dry up the money for colleges. They are forced to compete on degree cost and quality alone, and degree ROI will likely start to get factored into the price. College used to be relatively low cost long ago and easily accessible to the middle class, even lower middle class. Yes, the colleges will be hurting and screaming if they took that money away but they did this to themselves. Their entire business model is based on never ending government subsidy, essentially free money. At this point it will require a reckoning but this is always the case when you set up systems like this with good intentions and bad outcomes.
You see almost the same phenomena with Uber vs traditional taxi's. The government forced taxi's to buy medallions to operate a certain number of drivers because they didnt want the streets overrun with taxi's, with each medallion costing hundreds of thousands and even up to a million dollars in places like NYC. A taxi driver essentially had to have a second mortgage to operate. Along comes Uber and that whole government backed system gets crushed and starts to look ridiculous and artificially inflated in price. Yes, the taxi drivers got screwed, but it was the "good intentions" of the medallion system to keep the number of taxi's low that screwed over the consumer with higher cost rides compared to a market driven approach with companies like Lyft and Uber competing to the bottom. Let the market do the same for colleges. They have fancy campuses now.
There have been other ideas where student loan ROI is factored in and the college themselves must cover the cost of the loan if your degree turns into a lower paying job and the percentage of your loan payment exceeds some percentage of your income. Either way they have skin in the game that's EXACTLY whats needed.

There are already very affordable college options - the reason many schools charge more is because of demand and exclusivity.
This is another example of sensationalism. According to an article on Forbes -> "The average student loan debt for members of the Class of 2018 is $29,200"
Is that really so egregious?
Isn't it more likely that semi-skilled labor jobs disappeared increasing the demand to go to college for a good job? I don't think the loans are enough to justify the increase.

I would say that if someone was housed, clothed, and fed for four years while they worked perhaps only at a summer job, that being only $29K in debt is quite a good deal.
It's not just tuitions, books, and fees. You could make tuition and books free and someone still has to cover your living expenses for ~4 years of (mostly) not working at a paid job.

29k in debt is the deal - that's the average of a graduating class, so people ARE finding ways to provide for their needs and go to school and come out with 29.
*Assuming these numbers are accurate - I'm not here to get into a statistical debate on the numbers. But assuming that number is accurate.

What's the variance in the set? how do you know it's not bimodal with many students having scholarships or parent paid tuition, food, and board; then other students mostly graduating with 50k plus debt?

In my less than complete research it seems the ranges are based from 27k-37k. Either way, that doesn't seem to to bad.
So based on that number being relatively true, is that too high? Why is that too high?

It's too high if the degree doesn't lead to employment or is not useful in employment. Consider the cost over a lifetime: it is much more than 27-37k after it is paid off and there is no way to discharge the debt. It's a risk that is put on students who are 17-18 and the effect is essentially to increase worker desperation of 21-22 year olds - suppressing labor costs to employers while increasing the monthly bills of the employee. Why should students pay for this while living for 4 years in poverty conditions when there is arguably little tangible benefit beyond checking a box required by employers?

> Why should students pay for this while living for 4 years in poverty conditions when there is arguably little tangible benefit beyond checking a box required by employers?
They wouldn't. But there is a tangible benefit for many, that is why they are willing to spend this money to go to school.
No one forces kids to go to school at 18 just like it doesn't force kids to blow money on credit cards and rack up debt, or buy cars on ridiculous interest rate loans, or spend high rent in over-priced apartments so they can be near the cool bars. No one forces kids to go to the private school for 40k a year over a local school at half the price.
No one forces parents to not save more money for college, or to help their kids more.
The fact that these things continue is evidence enough - the cost benefit is college is still worth it. I've seen little (besides rich white Silicon Valley types who are loaded railing against the establishment)evidence otherwise.

The fact that it continues is not evidence of effectiveness of educational ability, it’s evidence of structural entrenchment of the process due to the efficiency with which the process can extract value from students without options or perspective.

Getting a job is no evidence of effectiveness of educational ability either.
No one actually learns how to do any job in high school either. It's just a credential representing a general level of intelligence.

I think if you look at what modern on-campus housing and amenities have evolved to become, I struggle to agree with a description of that experience as "poverty conditions".

I’ve heard that narrative too.. Dorms with 2 people in a 15x10 space was my first experience. Then there was a whole bubble of slum lords renting barely habitable split homes built a century ago near campus for the same amount my parents pay on their mortgage. Large minority of college students report being hungry and not being able to afford food. Sure there were some nice new buildings as seen on tv, many of them weren’t and had terrible seating and lighting though.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hunger-campus-fight-aga...

Community colleges skews the data.

I think you're demonizing gov't intervention in education, but you can't expect a democratically elected Congress to not try to prevent China/Russia to overtake them in science/engineering. College fees are insane, and loans are almost predatory, yes. But if banks don't give you a loan to go to school, shouldn't the government intervene?
Also, I don't want VC backed colleges "competing" to maximize revenue/some arbitrary metric if colleges will go the way of Uber/Lyft.
The ROI idea is great and may be a good compromise. You may lose some non-STEM majors though, and I think that's a bad thing. Maybe the different colleges within a uni (eng, math, lib arts) should have different tuition.

If the fear of Chinese or Russian engineering is a real thing, one can limit loans to engineering degrees, not to music, for example.
Another thing the government can do is to provide a limited loan for college and not for master degrees. In my company most assistants (lowest ranks in the office) have masters degrees because it's free (in Europe), a total waste of money.
And another: the more money the government gives, the higher the fees. OK, give less money, still help the students but not that much as today, get lower prices due to lowered supply.

I think an Uber or AirBnB of higher education is just around the corner. Uber wasn't simply a policy-change in taxi-cabs. It was a change in tech that allowed drivers to find the customers. AirBnB is about computer-based rating system which allows providers and customers rate each other. Computers and internet make that kind of thing possible.
Hey why not allow students to take courses from multiple universities online, and rate those courses? Let professors rate their students, but also students rate their professors.
And pandemic makes people see that they can (or must) study from home anyway, with their computer and video-connection. That simply wasn't technically possible 20 years ago.
E-learning has its pros and cons, but it is still a new field which has room to improve.

Stop guaranteeing student loans, permit universities to take a percentage of student filed tax for lifetime of student. Perfectly aligns interests of student and university: creates annual recurring revenue from all students, if student pays tax to IRS portion goes to university. Since US taxes world income, this ensures university is reimbursed.
University will stop offering low quality degrees that do not offer utility and focus on current needs of economy.

> Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two.
As a person who hired a couple dozen people, and interviewed hundreds, let me correct this: at present it's "pick one", because "quality" is not a real option. My observation is, people who are good at software engineering are often good _in spite of_, and not _thanks to_ whatever their alma mater did. If they just took whatever their school offered and nothing else, they wouldn't know anything other than Java, and they'd suck at Java as well. The quality of CS education is piss poor even in "reputable" schools. People are overpaying for what they get to a rather extreme degree (pun intended).

> Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two.
In Germany we have all three: everyone with the proper credentials ("Abitur" plus a couple side ways for those who didn't manage it, like a Master certification in a trade) can attend university, our universities are top notch, and free (even for foreigners).

The key there is proper credentials. I have German relatives and was suprised to learn about the exams that dictate essentially which tier of education you can pursue. Sure its free AFTER the fact. Italy has a similar system where you must take a continuation exam after year 1 which anywhere from 50 to 70% fail. Its true top American schools don't accept just anyone, but there typically IS a university out there that WILL accept you in America unless you are an absolute moron, and the degrees offered typically have the same accreditation as any other (if they are not accedited then it is a typically considered close to a scam degree that only the gullible fall for), just maybe not the prestige of the school. The catch in America is you go into massive debt.

European universities actually profit from letting the government meddle, and most of us do have much more opportunities for attending universities than the average American, from the available information.
In some countries it still is free (or has a symbolic price), go figure!

I hear this all the time but they never mention the exams that weed out large % of the population unless you jump through additional hoops. Germany has exams that dictate whether you go to university or trade school, with very little recourse to fix. Italy has continuation exams after the first year that 50 to 70 % can fail. Sure its free/low cost after the fact. Its a totally different government meddled system in Europe. Almost anyone in the US can find a for profit University (I know many with a 90% acceptance rate) that will accept them somewhere in the US with real accredited degrees.

> This is the crux of it that everyone needs to get over. Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two. By letting the government meddle you have guaranteed no one can afford college and will be long in debt to a loan they cannot discharge in bankruptcy.
No, this is just boring, lazy libertarianism. What the government did was hand the private sector a blank cheque, which they duly deposited into their bank account, just like any sensible person would.
If the government actually got seriously involved, education could be run as a public service, and it could be all three of universal, high quality, and cheap, as it is in many countries outside the US.

This is true. Just because the US Government isn't able to run public services doesn't mean governments can't run public services effectively. My province runs our utilities as a publicly owned company, we get not only the cheapest electricity and free water, but also technological innovation and profit that goes to everyone.

Except that it is no where near universal in Europe. I hear this all the time but they never mention the exams that weed out large % of the population unless you jump through additional hoops. Germany has exams that dictate whether you go to university or trade school, with very little recourse to fix. Italy has continuation exams after the first year that 50 to 70 % can fail. Its a totally different government meddled system in Europe. Almost anyone in the US can find a for profit University (I know many with a 90% acceptance rate) that will accept them somewhere in the US with real accredited degrees. The problem is that free government money is tide that raises all prices.

I dunno, colleges in Europe fair well, there most countries just subsidize tuition. And rely on tradition and non rational incentives to keep quality reasonable.
The failure modes arise when the actors are rational and profit oriented.

I hear this all the time but they never mention the exams that weed out large % of the population unless you jump through additional hoops. Germany has exams that dictate whether you go to university or trade school, with very little recourse to fix. Italy has continuation exams after the first year that 50 to 70 % can fail. Its a totally different government meddled system in Europe. Almost anyone in the US can find a for profit University (I know many with a 90% acceptance rate) that will accept them somewhere in the US with real accredited degrees.

> Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two.
You can get all three. At leat if by high quality you mean that people learn stuff.
What conventional education gives you is signalling.
And part of the whole point of signalling is to burn resources to show off.

The linked blog makes total sense to me, and frankly, I'm astounded that the false dilemma presented in the parent is the top voted comment.

Universality, High Quality, Low Cost
Oh come on, we do not need the facilities, sports stadiums, plush housing, food options, gaudy offices for professors, and non-professor bureaucrats, and grade inflation in modern "education". None of that actually contributes to High Quality.
You absolutely could have low cost and universality and produce well-educated undergraduates by the current standard of US education.

How do you quantify 'High Quality' other than developing connections? College was a class vehicle but is now just a method for people to party away from home and walk away with massive amounts of debt.
Read 'Paying for Party' if you'd like a sobering view at how fucked everything is (graduated in 2009 and it was so true even at that point)

Maybe that's true in the political climate of the USA, but there's plenty of other countries that have either free University or interest free student loans while still having high quality Universities.
E.g. New Zealand has interest free loans, and Auckland university is ranked 81st in the world (although I have no idea whether these rankings are meaningful for bachelors students)

> Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two.
Or, move to the Old Continent and pick 3...
Although fees are indirectly increasing in Europe as well. But it still is massively more affordable than in the US. Hopefully, we'll manage to keep it that way.

I hear this all the time but they never mention the exams that weed out large % of the population unless you jump through additional hoops. Germany has exams that dictate whether you go to university or trade school, with very little recourse to fix. Italy has continuation exams after the first year that 50 to 70 % can fail. Its a totally different government meddled system in Europe. Almost anyone in the US can find a for profit University (I know many with a 90% acceptance rate) that will accept them somewhere in the US with real accredited degrees.

> Similar to what Google is doing with its certificate program they are rolling out.
Will Google hire someone coming out of its certificate programs who didn't go to an actual college?

I would invite you to examine the non-dischargeable debt claim before propagating it.

Thanks, I did and you are partially correct. I'm not talking private loan debt, I'm talking Federal student loan debt.
https://studentaid.gov/manage-loans/forgiveness-cancellation...
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/797330613/myth-busted-turns-o...
It's considered difficult but not totally impossible. It is indeed treated differently from other debt.

You can generalize things well, you've concluded your point just by using a trilemma

Yup, the trilemma was my point, there is no perfect answer but definitely what we have now can be totally reworked with this in mind. I do think there are alternative systems that can at least make "degree" a lot more cheap and efficient to acquire without the universality component.

> Universality, High Quality, Low Cost. Pick two.
Aren't universality and low cost mostly the same thing? The lower the cost the more people can afford it, if the cost is low enough that is capitalism version of universal. (That's probably why many other commenters claimed their country has all three)
What do you really mean when you say "low cost", to which % of the population do you expect it to be "low"?

Here's a potentially simple way to perhaps shave as much as 25% or more from the cost of STEM degrees in the US:
Eliminate all non-STEM coursework from degree requirements.
This could easily shave not only tens of thousands of dollars from a STEM degree but it would also cut it down by a year (if not more).
I would also vector students who lack the proper foundation in say, language skills or the sciences, to take courses at community colleges. Not only would this lower costs to students, it would also support local colleges.

Isn't this an associate's/technical degree? To be a successful engineer/doctor/lawyer, you need some non-STEM coursework for communication, ethics, or just to expand your view.
To last point, many state colleges in the US let you transfer credits from a community/regional college easily, so you can save ~50%

While I do understand what you are saying, the educational deficit we are seeing is at the high school level. When I attended high school we had coursework on ethics, logic, philosophy, business, literature, languages, etc. The average high school graduate in the US is shamefully unprepared for life.
My greater point is that adding $50K in non-STEM coursework as a graduation requirement is wrong.
The other element of this conversation is that non-STEM departments have developed deep one-sided political bias over the last several decades. As a result they are engaged in activity almost indistinguishable from indoctrination. We are issuing government-backed loans for kids to be exposed to ever more extreme narratives with no option to opt out. And then we make them pay for those loans. This is wrong.

If you think bias and indoctrination are something that only developed "over the last several decades," you're mistaken. This has been the case of all universities, since time immemorial. And the swing to the left started in the Sixties (at least in the US).

You are, of course, absolutely correct. I said the last few decades because that is, again, as you said, the current "phase" we are on.
We want universities to be places where ideas from a range of schools of thought mix and are able to be explored openly and without negative repercussions. I don't want the extreme right to own university thought any more than the extreme left. We know the consequences of mono-cultural group think are never positive. The canonical example of what happens when the extreme right owns university culture being Nazis, of course.
My personal view on this is that private universities can do as they please. Any university that is publicly funded, either directly or indirectly (government guaranteed loans are an example of this) must have faculty and a culture that reflects the nation with balance and openness.
The fact that our universities have tilted so far to the left isn't good for the nation. Anyone who disagrees with this should consider what things would be like if the opposite were true. If the right owned though at our universities it would be just as much of a nightmare in the making.
This interview with Niall Ferguson (Oxford/Cambridge/Harvard/Stanford professor) was a real eye opener. Some might disagree, but I think the topic warrants some thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ

Hey, careful with that "Nazis" label. It implies a lot of things that are a poor fit for politics in the USA. It certainly doesn't just match up with the extreme right.
Consider these examples:
FDR actually put one ethnicity, the Japanese, in concentration camps. Harvard (proven in court) and others are discriminating against people of Asian ancestry. In 2019, 44% of colleges had segregated graduation, with black-only ceremonies. The typical Planned Parenthood is in a black community, and the founder specifically wanted to prevent that community from making more people.
Are those people and institutions the extreme right?

I meant it more as a time and event marker rather than a comparison or description of US politics.
The point is universities must have balance and promote tolerance. The extremes —either extreme— are undesirable and lead to nothing good for society.
I take the down-voting as evidence of sorts. I am saying we need balance and readers don’t like it. I don’t need to wonder why, I know.

Many of the stem subjects would be easier to automate the instruction of and are taught by researchers who would prefer not to be teaching - making some portion of the in person lectures at research universities for stem of limited value.

Talk about removing non-STEM courses from university suggests a disagreement on what university is.
IMO if you want to remove non-STEM courses, what you actually want is a trade school. University is all about learning outside of the normal narrow viewpoint, so removing everything outside the narrow viewpoint defeats the point.
"But so what", you might say. Well, here's the problem: trade schools already exist, and nobody wants to hire from a trade school because it's seen as less classy.
I think this is the fundamental problem: People want a degree to primarily satisfy employers, and what employers want is to exclude people. You can't have an all-inclusive exclusive degree, it's an oxymoron.
Either you change employers' minds to match your vision of all-inclusive degrees, or you change the degrees to match employer's vision of exclusivity.

> University is all about learning outside of the normal narrow viewpoint
PRECISELY!
Watch this then and tell me I am wrong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkNIOkGtnQ
We are funding and paying for a "narrow narrow viewpoint" to our detriment. This is isn't what universities are for. I am 100% in agreement with you in that regard. Watch the interview and think about what he is saying.

This is a 1.5 hour video, you might want to summarize a bit...

Being informed requires effort and some dedication. A bullet-point summary can't possibly capture what one can learn by taking the time to listen to a careful intellectual exchange with nuance and detail that escapes a summary.
That said, the conversation, among other things, explores the mechanisms through which academia tends to self-radicalize (note I am not specifying a direction) as well as some of the consequences of such radicalization.

The problem is accreditation and standardization. We know roughly what is in a BS degree for CS or any typical engineering. The baseline is mandated by the accreditor.
We don't value half the gunk that the accreditor demands, but universities like to make students pay for cheap filler gunk, and they get more influence over the accreditor than any normal employer would. It's really a cartel, with universities all colluding to waste about 2% of every student's life. For every 50 students, that's like a murder.
Employers would jump at the chance to hire somebody with a 4-year degree that is like the MS minus the AA. Replace the cheap filler gunk with more-advanced STEM classes.
Sadly that isn't offered, at least not in a widely-recognized way with standardization.

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