The price of higher education in the US is disgusting. Perhaps one of the worst things a parent can do for their children these days is encourage them to go to a private school. It simply isn't worth it. The starting salary-to-tuition ratio has absolutely plummeted. Perhaps if you're going for your MBA or some other graduate degree, it may be worth it. But, for undergrad, it's simply foolish.

Foolish but necessary as many companies like P&G toss resumes without a BA/BS.

Maybe the price should go down instead of the attendance going down.

Could you elaborate, Draug? I know people at P&G who didn't go to a private school.

Why would the price go down when people are willing to pay?

@abge: the price would go down (or at least stop rising so fast) if the government (a) legislated a cap to rate hikes, so that tuition hikes could not exceed inflation by a certain amount or (b) changed the rules so that student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy. that way, banks would have some 'skin in the game' and credit supply would tighten and so the willingness to pay exorbitant tuition would decrease.

Frank, they could even just cap the hikes of fed loans. Those are basically what's been driving the rises.

Or in other words, abge's right -- but it's the feds who have been "willing to pay" outrageous tuition, at least up front, and who are thus complicit in burdening the recipients of their loans with crippling debt.

Tell the expensive schools they're out in the cold.

Yes, you are right. Similar to the housing crisis, everybody is at fault:
-the gov't for making loans too readily available and for not properly regulating the loan market or tuition levels (even public schools like the UCs have ridiculous tuition)
-student and parents for making poor decision about which schools to go to, what majors to study, and how much debt burden to shoulder
-schools for being greedy, and also deceptive about financial aid
-the financial system for creating incentives for banks to issue poor quality loans

@abge - I meant college in general. Sorry for misunderstanding. Even in state tuitions are outfuckingrageous.

@abge - it all depends on what school you go to. In general, yeah the price is way to high. My school back in the states has built in 4% price increases for the next 3 years, its ridiculous. However, being at LSE has shown me some things - mainly that where you are sometimes *is* worth the money. Firms like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, etc FARM this school. I'm not even going to go in how deep the connections are between this school and major financial institutions, both public and private. Back at my American University? Nonexistent. Maybe a few of them will show up for the career fair, but thats it.

But at LSE? There's weekly networking events, presentations by employees or ex-employees, and simply having "LSE" on your resume will be enough to get you past the first round of screening. Its nuts.

Also, BA/BS doesn't mean private school necessarily. Public schools are increasing their costs rapidly as well. In NY its around $20,000 a year. In California its a bit higher I think.

Texas, meanwhile, remains around $10k/year. </shameless plug>

Southern schools will in general be cheaper than north schools

In state versus out of state can make a huge difference too.

Oh no question. Increasingly, you're barely better off going out of state public than private.

If we're talking about how to regulate the budgets of public and some private universities, I'm pretty sure that sports can go. At the universities I have examined the budgets for (for an old undergrad research paper), the athletic budget was supplemented by mandatory fees of all students (which, essentially, is tuition, even though they don't call it that) and it /never/ paid back into the university. The athletic side of the university only supported itself. I have also seen very, very few donors donate to build a new academic building because the football team was doing so well. It costs a lot to cover the insurance required for these athletic programs, money that could be going to, I don't know, pay professors? Or money that could be dropped from the "mandatory fees" every year? It was just disgusting when I looked at some actual numbers. (btw, did you know that universities are very protective of their budgets when you want to start digging around in them? Not protective as in "no, you can't see this," more like giving you a run-around and not letting you make copies and crap like that.)

@dubm - Arguably, you could cut those fees and the athletics programs would start charging more for admission to their games to cover it, but atheltics *makes* money for the universities, especially schools with big football and basketball teams that always seem to be in the BCS or March Madness,

I've said this a lot and I think saying it again in this thread is worth it.

My two core beliefs (the two political philosophies that I care about the most) are free trade (the ability to trade and move freely from one nation to another) and free education (an educated work force is a best work force).

That being said, education should only be funded to a certain extent. I strongly believe in a voucher system for primary and secondary school education with the hopes that everyone, or almost everyone, in the work force will have a secondary school education.

Beyond that higher education is a service and with some exceptions (like engineering and medicine) degrees are rather useless.

A poetry, language, political science and even economics degree provides little to no job opportunities and will only leave the student in massive debt, 3-9 times his average yearly salary in his youth post degree.

The opportunity cost of getting a degree is the 4 years of forgone wages as well as the 4 years of accumulated debt and if your going to get a liberal arts or social sciences degree, your actually going to be, in the long run, worse off then if you just have a high school degree.

I personally believe that we shouldn't treat higher education as a public good (with governments heavily subsidizing both tuition rates as well as keeping the interest on student loans low) but as a consumer service. If you want a degree, either get the money first, get a private scholarship (as in not one by the government, since I want those gone) or take out loan from a bank willing to take a risk on you (and they probably would only risk something like an engineering degree since thats the one with the most probably pay-off), not a bank who has to take the risk on you because the government says so.

Now as for the video, the speaker sounds a lot like Bill Whittle, a man who's own youtube channel I am subscribed to.

@gold

That very well be true, but, quite frankly, business is one of those fields that knowing someone is more important than being good at your craft. With the recent recessions, I suspect that may change.

"That very well be true, but, quite frankly, business is one of those fields that knowing someone is more important than being good at your craft. With the recent recessions, I suspect that may change."
In most free markets I would agree, but the bailouts and subsidies to keep wallstreet etc. afloat meant that there was little change among the corporate executives. Change isn't needed because too big to fail means the government caries the bill to any failure while you personally carry the reward.

@abge

I think just about every field suffers from nepotism, albeit to different degrees. In the sciences you have to network just as much if you want to get a good post doc and or job.

@fasces, abge, et al - There is one area of business where croneism and nepotism don't run as rampant and where execs have to do a good job or lose their job, and that is the IT sector. Companies like Microsoft and Google and even Apple... As big as they are, the government probably wouldn't bail them out and they clearly haven't needed bail outs. They will replace failing CEOs and the tax payer never foots the bill if they make a bad business decision.

But most of the manufacturing and finance industries are in that whole "too big to fail" system and they seem to just pass around failed CEOs and COOs and other execs between each other.

@smc

Yes, of course everywhere has it, but business in particular suffers from it.

As an engineer, I can tell you first hand, it's not nearly as bad.

@Draug

I agree, although I wasn't really lumping in IT/High Tech with business in general.

Why does everyone treat college like it's trade school? The purpose is to obtain the learning necessary to be an educated citizen (let us recall the original meanings of "humanities" and "liberal arts") and the general critical thinking skills to be a useful member of society.

Anyway, this video makes some good points (most notably in pointing out the scam of not allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy court, one of the most egregious examples of crony capitalism in the USA and a big contributor to growing education costs), but the general thrust is all wrong.

College costs are relatively rising because other costs are decreasing, which is due (in part) to the fact that higher education is heavily dependent on skilled labor - the kind of gains in productivity that automation and computerization make possible in so many other fields do not work for higher education. If anything, they are counter-productive, because the very minor gains in productivity that, say, a personal computer gives a professor actually is more expensive, because now you have a complicated computer system that requires skilled technicians to make sure Dr. Whoever's Outlook is working. That's not a bubble in the sense that home ownership or .com or tulips were bubbles (things becoming expensive because of irrational market behavior); it's just stuff being relatively more expensive.

In other words, higher education is going to go through serious and probably painful reforms, which have been foolishly delayed by both government policy and administrative unwillingness to face change, but it's not going to be a bubble that bursts.

Also, Draug, at schools like Georgia or Auburn or Texas, yes, the athletics department makes money, but I believe that the large majority of schools lose money or break even, and only then because of the kinds of fees dub mentions. I don't think that means schools should get rid of athletics, but it does need to be understood and considered.

Well, everything is business. You were more referring to traditional manufacturing and finance then.

The communications/informtion technology sector is probably the best example of free market little regulation industry out there right now and we see here companies with some of the highest profit margins in the world alongside the highest consumer satisfaction.

I emphasize communication technology not communications in general since AT&T, Rodgers etc. are hated by the consumer (at least they are in Canada).

@ck - I agree. Small schools where atheltics aren't making money shoudl consider cutting them. But those schools who consistently make the BCS or NCAA basketball tournies do, so dubmdell's argument to cut athletics across the board is problematic to those schools who *make* money on their athletics program. I was just pointing out that there is no "one size fits all" silver-bullet fix to the problem.

@Fasces

I agree, with a few very important caveats.

First, Primary and Secondary schools in the US are a disaster. Under your system, they would need to be seriously overhauled so that people actually came out prepared with the skills to live. For instance, courses in personal finance and US government should be mandatory in all HS.

Second, while the benefits of poetry, literature, etc are not as immediately apparent as doctors and engineers, I do believe they are important in a high functioning society. The problem is, the needs of liberal arts students are so vastly different than STEMM, that it's hard to accommodate both in the same higher education system.