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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

Schools compete not on price but on other factors. That's why they want to build massively expensive campuses and elaborate facilities, because that is what students base their decisions on. If schools competed on price, everyone would be going to state colleges c̶o̶m̶m̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶l̶e̶g̶e̶.

I'm not sure how you compel schools to compete on price, because the consumers don't care about price. They'd rather get they "good college experience" for $50k a year than the "sufficiently good education" for $7k a year, even though both options are available to choose.

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Remembering when I was applying to colleges, it was understood that inexpensive state colleges were probably 'sufficiently good', and cost effective, but it was impossible to grade that statement. Would it be good enough for your goals in life? How can a sixteen year old know?

So, people picked the 'best' school they could get into. Not just for the 'experience', but to make sure they got the best education they could and opened as many doors as possible. Because you don't really get a do-over.

This is very insightful.

After having gone through it all, do you think if it matters how many doors open for a person based on the college they went? I suppose if someone went to a highly ranked school, it might matter.

But being able to get into a highly ranked school is probably because of what the person had (money, life experiences) or what they did (crushed some standardized test).

So, in the end, does it actually matter?

After reading many resumes and talking to many candidates, it can matter. Many budget state colleges simply don’t have the curriculum, faculty, or clout- at least in my field. This means their graduates are like juniors at higher ranked schools. An exceptional student can overcome that obstacle, but they are swimming against the current.

Interestingly, the renowned private universities don’t seem to have any better of a curriculum than the high-grade public research universities. So from an education point of view, there still exists a ‘good enough’, it’s just not the budget state college.

It doesn't matter.

I did physics at a world top 10 university and the course work was basically day care. The vast majority of the 'difficulty' of the subject matter was because the majority of students were bad at algebra. The outcomes would have been better for everyone if we completely ignored first year and just taught people the Knuth Bendix algorithm instead.

Yes, it matters. The quality of education is better. Lower ranked schools don't dole out the same kind of punishingly hard material that higher ranked schools do. The content of the degree is meaningfully different (based on my experience doing undergrad in a well ranked school and going back to mess around in part time classes while working.)

Consider the percentage of alumni kid and kids of ‚friends‘ admitted to ivy league schools who very likely would fail admission in a purely merit based system. Then factor in the very high graduation rates of ivy schools. And now consider how hard they must be to get through. Still think harder than others?

The reason why the consumers don't care about price is because of the federally guaranteed student loans that easily mislead decision making. The market would look very different without that compounding subsidy.

This is absolutely it. The "shopper" is not the payer, so why consider price?

Not to nitpick a tangent, but community colleges, at least where I live, are only 2 year institutions, and don't provide full BS/BA degrees, just Associate degrees, which don't really open the same doors as the Bachelor degrees.

I really wish we had 4 year institutions managed like our community colleges, though. I remember my 2 years there much more fondly than I do my time spent at a "real" university.

FYI many CCs have started offering 4 year degrees in the past 20 years or so. Mostly related to “local” industries such as nursing, food safety, some business admin, etc.

It may be a reality soon

https://hechingerreport.org/from-associate-to-b-a-more-peopl...

New research from the think tank New America shows that 24 states have approved at least some community colleges’ plans to launch bachelor’s degree programs; at least seven have been approved in the past five years.

Often the prestigious state universities provide preferential transfers for state community college graduates.

> I remember my 2 years there much more fondly than I do my time spent at a "real" university.

Genuinely curious, what was it you liked about CC?

Well, the first thing I should say upfront is it's very possible those were just better years for me, and that colors my memories of CC with happy nostalgia. I think it was how much simpler everything felt, from the administration to the classes. The atmosphere just seemed less pretentious, while the actual education wasn't really any better or worse than the same undergrad studies I got elsewhere. Not really great, but they weren't pretending it was. It was "highschool part 2, except attendance is strictly voluntary, admission is cheap but not effortlessly free, and the faculty has greater authority/autonomy to teach".

A few things that stick out in my memory are the greater number of non-traditional students, several of whom I made acquaintances with. They had more stories and life experience than the average 18/19/20 y/old and I thought were more interesting to talk to. Also, my CC had some vocational/non-academic tracks with accredited classes available as general electives, and I enjoyed stuff like some aviation classes, where again I got to hang around a totally different group of students.

It feels like it all was more developmentally important than the by-the-books liberal arts education I got at a private university, full of self-important pep-talks by upper level college administration, and professors who were only paid marginally better than the instructors at my CC...

(I want to emphasize this is about cookie cutter undergrad studies, and leaves out the other functions of universities, which a CC obviously couldn't compete with)

Right, perhaps it would have been better to say state school.

Where does the local state university cost $7k/yr?

If you’re not living on campus, Florida State University ticks that box.

https://admissions.fsu.edu/first-year/finances/

Yeah that does seem a little low. US News and World report has average in-state tuition at $10,423/yr [1]

[1]: https://www.usnews.com/object/image/00000183-138c-db49-a3a3-...

Possibly because that's including the flag ship and state school systems (if I'm using that correctly). For example, the Cal State system seems to be in the $6-9k/yr range and the UC system seems to be $13k+/yr. I think this excludes fees, and I think some programs may also cost extra.

It's not just the experience. After graduating, where you went to school often matters more than your GPA when applying to jobs.

Some schools do compete on price… to be the most expensive. I distinctly remember a small NE college president bragging about being the most expensive

If students chose colleges based on something rational like expected future earnings they would all choose engineering schools.

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