Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein in Tuition | Hacker News Reader

Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein in Tuition

nytimes.com

9 pointskhc13 comments

So many millions being thrown around. Parking Garages, Sports teams, Greek Life, Computers, Clubs, Architecture, Financial Aid, Housing, Food Plans, Homecoming, Police, Power Plants, Wifi, Apparel, Advertisements, Stadiums, Graphing Calculators, and Flora. Just to read books and socialize. It's insane. And the best solution we have: Rating which circus is the best one.

I'm constantly in awe how bloated the Education System is. And this is the machine that's designed to produce the minds that fuel innovation! I only wish I had a solution but at least I have a starting point: books and socialization. Both things can be done on the internet and instantly. All we need is the tools to augment the experience, the discipline to take advantage of it.

I've always preached the following: the first to take complete advantage of the internet will become a God amongst Men. What, then, are we waiting for?

> lists internet access as one of the boondoggles of the education system, to be slashed and feared, and veered away from as it detracts from our books! and our socialization!

> says that we should use more internet in our solution, because this is the future and clearly interconnectedness is the future in book! and socialization!

How am I supposed to take your opinion seriously, and what actually is your opinion, when you say such contrary things in such little time?

I think you're being a little harsh. S/he was listing things that are not essential to a college education. The second point is referring to a different type of college education - one that obviously needs the internet since it would exist on the internet.

Also, Wifi != internet access. You can get to the internet without Wifi.

Without some coercion, the only one thing can "rein in tuition" is demand - it would happen if significant numbers of college age people would say "the offered product is too expensive for what it gives me, I'm not going to buy".

That's not happening, college enrollment is not dropping like a rock, and the students (or their parents) are willing to suffer the cost increase. So it's their choice - with a dash of tragedy of commons, as it's probably really not worth for a tiny minority to 'defect' from college as a social concept unless a large critical mass does that.

Colleges are not a monopoly. All that is needed is for students to say "The marginal cost of switch from college A to college B is to expensive for what it gives me, so I am going to stick with college A". At this point, we have free market dynamics to offer the most attractive cost/benifit ratio. The problem that the article identifies is that college is simply expensive, and has been subsidized by the state. As the state reduces its subsidy, the portion of tuition that the students see nessasarily increases.

There is also a slight market distortion in that the state only subsidizes a portion of the market (public schools for in state students).

I mean, there are other substantial factors that make this not an ideal free market:

- The time to set up certain kinds of facilities, eg, good physics labs or mechanical engineering labs, can be on the order of several years to a decade.

- There is a limited ability to scale up, as it relies on its own out put to keep functional (eg, professors and TAs).

- Non-responsive hiring managers whose cultural sense was normalized before many of these changes impacted colleges (eg, >20 years ago) haven't adjusted their hiring practices, and place an artificially high reward on college degrees.

Umm, we're also not seeing actions consistent with "The marginal cost of switch from college A to college B is to expensive for what it gives me, so I am going to stick with college A".

That marginal cost is often 'hidden' by student loans, and if I recall correctly, USA analysis shows that students making that decisions is even rarer than the decision "I believe that I can't afford college, so I won't even check how much it would cost for me" (which was a quite popular attitude for minority students).

As a tiny minority who 'defected' (at least from the consumer side of academia), it was probably closer to the offered product is increasingly outdated/inefficient, no matter what the price, to exploring things in general.

I think that for the tiny minorities, finding ways to exploit the dynamics of any social concept, will enable one to obtain value from the grey areas of such concepts that most people aren't willing to operate in.

> the only one thing can "rein in tuition" is demand

Or increased supply.

There is a lot of supply, and a surfeit of postgraduate degrees in many fields where associate professor is a great job means the quality isn't bad.

An increase in supply would have to come from some innovation that enables really ramping up supply and competing against high quality traditional college education.

Don't look for demand to get slack, either. Lots of foreign demand at every level is out there and it isn't going to stop growing soon.

There is a lot of supply... and if there were more it would drive down prices.

Hardly anyone pays the sticker price on college tuition. Net price, what people actually pay, has fallen.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/22/153316565/the-pric...

That assertion is at odds with the empirical fact that average student loan debt is on the rise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com