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0 pointsechelon4y ago0 comments

That's an interesting take, but I disagree.

The reason colleges cost so much is that they've expanded their administration, facilities, and sports programs to soak up all of the available loan money.

I went to a state school that focused on STEM. The acceptance rate was low, class sizes were small, and the tuitions were reasonable. The buildings dated from the 60's. We didn't have extensive athletic programs, and our gym was falling apart. The school didn't spare expenses on things that didn't contribute directly to education.

We still had access to full machine shops, doppler radar installations, flow cytometers, BSL-3 labs, electron microscopes, wind tunnels, robotics facilities, and a boat load of really cool stuff. But it certainly didn't feel like an ivory tower.

Though our school wasn't losing money, the state board of regents decided to merge it into a much larger "liberal arts" school. This was done so that it could hit the student body requirements in order to qualify for building its own division I football program.

They built lots of fancy buildings for their dance program and theater productions. I can't even count how many stadiums and sports facilities they've constructed - it feels like two dozen! They're also purchasing lots of expensive real estate to enhance the size of the main campus. Meanwhile tuition has quadrupled and fees have gone up 1,000%.

It's bloat. That's why everything costs so much.

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lordnacho4y ago

I wonder if there's a market for schools that specifically don't have a sports program. I suspect the atmosphere at such a place would be attractive to a large minority of prospective students.

taylodl4y ago

A lot of students who may not play sports competitively still enjoy playing sports recreationally and really, given the sad state of American's health these days, we really need to be promoting the development of both mind and body.

dragonsky4y ago

Could somebody explain to me (Australian) why/how sport and higher education became so closely linked? We certainly have university sporting teams here, but they are not really notable and certainly don't have the political clout that they do in US schools.

lordnacho4y ago

In Europe all the football teams have their own junior teams that are separate from education. Eg there are Chelsea/Real Madrid/Bayern under-10s teams that kids attend after school and feed up to the seniors. In addition, the leagues in Europe are a pyramid. Part-timers play at the bottom, superstars at the top. There's relegation and promotion, and players can develop at lower league teams to get bought by the top clubs later.

In the US they don't have that. AFAIK, there's no "Green Bay Packers U-18s" football team that is integrated with the professional club and promotes young players. Baseball does have a farm team system called the Minor Leagues.

The NCAA which runs university athletics in the US managed to make a junior league feeding all the professional leagues in various sports. The progression for an American athlete is then to get a scholarship to play at some university, and then get drafted by a professional team once they finish.

danny_codes4y ago

It's just a market failure.

Student loans are government-guaranteed and cannot be absolved by bankruptcy. This IMO creates a perfect storm whereby under-informed teenagers can get massive loans they have no hope of repaying. Without the government/no bankruptcy components to this equation, the market would not support this kind of debt market.

Fortunately, this is easy to fix. There are two simple options (and probably many more complex ones):

1. Make it a free market. Make student debt absolvable by bankruptcy. Don't give government guarantees. Private loans will account for the viability of student's repaying those loans, while allowing bankruptcy helps ensure that unfair or predatory loans will be costly to the loan-issuer.

2. Make it a government service, like K-12. The government will actively manage the tertiary education market, thus making "the cost of college" a policy decision.

IMO the first one is not particularly desirable because it will limit college access to the upper socio-economic classes, further exacerbating wealth inequality and reducing social mobility. That leaves us with the second option, which is both straightforward to implement and has many case-studies abroad.

taylodl4y ago

The administrative bloat helps cover the fact that their graduates aren't able to get jobs upon graduating. Parents and prospective students feel good that 99.7% of the graduates got a job within their first year of graduation and don't realize 7% of that was as an administrator for the college.

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lordnacho4y ago

I wonder if there's a market for schools that specifically don't have a sports program. I suspect the atmosphere at such a place would be attractive to a large minority of prospective students.

taylodl4y ago

dragonsky4y ago

lordnacho4y ago

danny_codes4y ago

It's just a market failure.

Fortunately, this is easy to fix. There are two simple options (and probably many more complex ones):

2. Make it a government service, like K-12. The government will actively manage the tertiary education market, thus making "the cost of college" a policy decision.

taylodl4y ago

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