College Tuition Cost Rising Again This Fall | Hacker News Reader

College Tuition Cost Rising Again This Fall

nytimes.com

12 pointstokenadult22 comments

Continued increases in college expense should open up opportunities for hackers to make start-ups that disrupt the higher education system. There are several HN participants building businesses in this market.

But note: "More importantly, the estimated net price -- what the average student actually pays after accounting for financial aid -- was much lower, at about $1,620 at public four-year colleges, and under $12,000 at private ones. Both figures are higher than last year but still lower than five years ago, thanks to recent increases in financial aid both from the government and from colleges themselves. The figures do not include room, board and other living expenses." As long as colleges appear to offer out-of-pocket prices that are substantial discounts from list price, many students will continue to think that they are getting good value for their money--as perhaps they are. The challenge for a hacker is to offer plainly better value for even less money.

If one were to summarize the potentially fatal flaw in the current American system, it might come down to public subsidization of private institutions. Bailing out Wall Street. Private hospitals and insurers with much of their income coming through government run health programs. Halliburton mercenaries fighting and profiting from our wars. And taxes heavily subsidizing the cost of education at private universities.

In the article, I think the increase in tuition was pretty close to the increase in federal funds available for college education.

This gives us the worst of both worlds. Private entities freed from market pressures, but with none of the oversight or electoral accountability that comes with the public sector. This, in a nutshell, is what the common citizen is really angry about. This is what they elected Obama to change, but it is looking like he is only willing to address this problem at the margins.

It's very unsettling to see tuition increase at the same level of federal funds. That has to be addressed.

But I shudder to think how much worse off America and the entire world would be without the U.S. government helping people go to college.

The GI Bill after WWII gave an entire generation of veterans a free college education. Before then, going to college was just a luxury for the rich, pretty much everywhere in the world.

Government aid to college students makes America much stronger because an educated workforce is one of they keys to economic growth. Cut that and we're mortgaging our future.

How much of that money is going to fancy dorms, athletic facilities, and administrator salaries?

The problem is that the correlation between cost and quality of education has broken down. The government spends ever more money on education, with little net increase in the amount of educating because universities simply raise prices for the exact same product.

If the money is going to state schools where the government also gets a say in tuition costs, that's one thing. But government money going to private universities simply transfers public money into private endowments with little or no public accounting.

I wonder whether the discounts that are factored into the net price include loans that must, of course, eventually be paid back, with interest. Anyone know?

This whole situation is funny to me. We get so angry at large financial institutions, insurance companies, and other businesses that have all this money yet raise costs, premiums, and tack on fees. Yet we just sit by and allow these institutions of higher learning to gauge our pocketbooks whenever it suits them. I know things are slow now and its affecting everyone. I admit I don't know the circumstances surrounding public schools, but these private institutions should be ashamed. Schools like Harvard, Yale, Boston College have money in the coffers. Check out the dowries of these schools. I mean billions. And alumni keep adding to it every year. These schools, if they really cared about the financial issues of their graduating, classes would dip into these funds to assist in keeping costs low. This is not the case because these schools are just like the insurance companies and financial institutions..they want to make money. Presidents of educational institutions have the same goals as their counterparts running the financial institutions.

"We get so angry at large financial institutions, insurance companies, and other businesses that have all this money yet raise costs, premiums, and tack on fees."

This is because these are the same financial institutions, insurance companies, and other businesses where young people want to get jobs, because they have all the money. And they are only going to hire people going to the same fancy schools they went to.

If people are judging based on price, then some good advice is to get the first two years at a community college that has a relationship / automatic credit transfer to the university your are headed to. Getting all the general studies required courses out of the way saves a lot of hassle.

some good advice is to get the first two years at a community college that has a relationship / automatic credit transfer to the university your are headed to

Upvoted for general agreement and replying to note that this depends on what you are going to your university for. If going to the university is mainly for attending classes and obtaining a college diploma above a floor value of respectability, going to the least expensive college that offers courses toward your major can be a great idea. My childhood best friend, a smart boy from a working-class family, did two years of prerequisites to an electrical engineering degree at a local community college before transferring to the state university to finish his degree. He said he had more personal attention from his calculus and physics professors at the community college than he likely would have had at the university. He also met a start girl who is now his wife of thirty years at the community college. So all around that was a good idea for him.

But if the university offers sufficiently strong networking advantages, and connections with really influential people in your hoped-for occupation, it may be a good idea to go to the university from the beginning, even at greater out of pocket cost. There may be a rationale for choosing a top-however-many nationally known university over one's own state colleges and universities if that university's reputation has economic value for job-seekers, as perhaps it does.

Another thought...

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/06/19/is-higher-educatio...

Will a college education continue to be considered worth it if prices continue to rise? Especially for majors that don't see huge post-college wage increases. This is an interesting issue as Obama plans to raise college enrollment as a nation

My major concern about the push for higher enrollment is that specifically with universities, the percentage that drop out and don't re-enter higher education, about 1/4 of all initial applicants, will on average earn less than high-school drop outs meaning that a sizeable proportion of these drop outs remain unemployed.

It's disturbing that all statistics appear to be gathered after completion and not after enrolment, because the value of universities would drop drastically if people realised that 1/2 of entrants typically fail or drop out, and that half of those (1/4 of initial enrollers) will earn less than high school drop outs, which means that the average ~$3,000 extra earned for a true university graduation over a typical college graduation would all but vanish. Especially when factoring in that a college drop out earns more than a high school drop out, not less like a university graduate.

Essentially College is always good for your income, however university can be truly devastating for 1-in-4 people.

That's interesting stuff. What's the source?

Also I apologize for my ignorance here but what's the distinction in this context between a university and a college? Is it still research vs. not-so-much?

I read all the statistics when I was applying to university a few years back, it was my high-school careers councillor who actually pointed it out to me. All the open-statistics give the percentages for university drop out rates (they all seem similar throughout the UK, Canada and Australia and many parts of Europe where I've read the statistics). The incomes I've actually only seen for the US, Canada and the UK, which all seem to correlate reasonably well, however nothing offers a reason for the unemployment of university drop outs.

In this context I believe the distinction is between a technical college (1-3 year programs for certifications and diplomas) and a degree-orientated/undergraduate university, where the courses typically grant a bachelors degree instead of certification or a diploma.

I have to note the UK's statistics on this front are very confusing, as there is no physical distinction between a technical college and a university as there is in North America and is based off of course-outcome aims rather than actual institutions attended.

Canada's statistics are rather interesting on university drop outs, in that the Atlantic Provinces have phenomenally low first-year drop out rates (I believe P.E.I. is ~16% versus ~36% in Ontario, note that these don't include first-year failure percentages). So it truly isn't the institution itself that causes the failure, but an artefact of the process present in most schools.

Before advocating any countermeasures, you need to control for the self-selection of university vs. college students.

College tuition will continue to rocket upwards for the same reason as health care costs: demand-side subsidies. In this case: scholarships, financial aid, and low-interest loans.

Until these are removed, expect more of the same.

If, say, Bill Gates routinely handed out $10K to every person who has just bought a car, what do you think this would do to the prices of cars?

demand-side subsidies

Yes, I think that is a major problem in the current patchwork system of financing postsecondary schooling. The people choosing what colleges to attend and what programs to major in are not the same people as the ones bearing the cost of those decisions.

I'm in California and over a year span, my tuition has increased about 30%. Quite upsetting.

Has the quality of instruction also increased by 30%?

Personally for me, nothing has changed other than I'm paying several of hard-earned hundred dollars more out of my pocket, for nothing extra. In this case, I'm absolutely sure quality doesn't have a direct relationship with cost. Other students have it worse, especially freshmen. Admissions have plummeted, so less students get admitted, about 1000 or more G.E. classes were cut this semester, so longer graduation waits, professors were laid off, so less classes, and we have furlough days twice a month, which means professors must choose two days to stay home and not get paid. So we're paying more, yet receiving less education, which is nonsense.

This is another bubble.

This is another bubble.

What do you think the bursting of this bubble will look like?

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