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Comment by michaelchisari | Hacker News Reader

What also works against the idea of subsidies being the culprit is that it's not just universities that have seen this cost inflation.

The community college in the town I grew up in was $17 a credit hour in 1997. Adjusted for inflation, that's $26.17 a credit hour. A 4 credit hour class would cost $104.68. That's something many working people could cover to take a class here and there to further themselves or their job prospects. There were subsidies for those who couldn't afford that as well.

That same community college today? $132 a credit hour. That's a 500% increase over inflation.

This isn't being talked about because university costs affect middle and upper-middle class people more, so pundits and the media are going to be more affected.

But this gross inflation has definitely pushed working class and poor people out of the classroom and that's a terrible thing for society at large.

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I don’t understand your logic. People take out loans all the time to get community college degrees. Those loans are federally backed. So the increase in credit would indeed inflate community college costs.

Judging from a European perspective, I think society as a whole is better off if more people have access to affordable education and don't need to take out a loan to take classes.

I think most Americans (at least on HN) would agree with you.

Of course, there are complications.

In Europe, the effective tax rate is generally much higher, and the fraction of population that is university aged is generally lower. My understanding is that a non-trivial fraction of the population also goes into a trade school (?), which the US does not have in the same way.

In the US, lower taxes+loan is sometimes seen as more equitable (i.e. only those that use something pay for it) than a population wide tax. It is quite the risk you force onto someone young, though.

If you could drop your tax rate by 50%, but had to pay back $80-100k for college, would you take it? Obviously that tax goes to pay for many other things besides education, but the US-average mentality generally leans towards individual choice over broad social programs (with various political parties widely disagreeing).

>If you could drop your tax rate by 50%, but had to pay back $80-100k for college, would you take it?

Well you answered the question already yourself. In the end, I want to live in clean cities with safe sidewalks, and a responsible and community oriented populace.

They’re responding to the claim that “the price has gone up because students are responsible for more of the cost“ which is in the post above them. If the true cause of the increase was a drop in state funding, you’d expect other schools to not change in price very much.

> What also works against the idea of subsidies being the culprit is that it's not just universities that have seen this cost inflation.

The entire economy is subsidize. We have a credit-based system, hence universal access to cheap credit is the end-game, that is why car loans are starting to creep into the 10-year territory with 0 down and no credit score.

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