Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?
Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?
www.nytimes.com
Some Colleges Will Soon Charge $100,000 a Year. How Did This Happen?
125 comments
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How Did This Happen?
College loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Simple as that.
With lenders knowing that the government will make sure they get paid, they're happy to loan out any amount of money to anyone regardless of credit worthiness, because they take on literally zero risk.
Then colleges realize the same, and jack up their prices in turn. The feedback loop brings us to where we are today. There is no market (or other) force putting any downward pressure on tuition costs, at all. This is the inevitable result.
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College loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Simple as that.
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Yes this is generally true but I don't feel like it's fair to the colleges/universities who work to keep tuition and tuition increases in check. There are lots of decent public universities that have more reasonable tuition. The public university in my smallish city is about 10k a year for in-state. Not necessarily saying that's ideal for everyone or cheap but it's a far cry from these places pushing it to 40, 60, 100+k a year.
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Also important to point out that we slashed Public Funding of these universities and that's why the prices are going up in large part
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A system with only positive feedback inevitably ends up unstable.
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Pegged to an extreme at best
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Ronald Reagan. That's how this happened.
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Not that simple. This got started before he took office, and it culminated long after he was out of office. Way more than one person is to blame.
https://www.tateesq.com/learn/student-loan-bankruptcy-law-history
Student loans first became nondischargeable in bankruptcy in 1976 due to an amendment in the Higher Education Act. Section 439A of this act made student loan debt non-dischargeable until five years after the start of the repayment period, except in cases of undue hardship. Over time, laws were tweaked and widened to reinforce this limitation.
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This got started when he went after Berkeley as the candidate for governor of California, then became worse when he was governor, then other governors copied his playbook, then laws were enacted to roll it nationwide, then got worse when he became president. Prior to Reagan becoming governor of California all state universities were free for residents in California. Reagan hated this because it led to poor minorities being able to get an education, and he hated nothing more than he hated poor minorities.
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Maybe stop paying the coaches so much?
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this is a gross reality no one wants to admit... that the highest paid government officials in some states are coaches for state schools.
we prioritize sports and 'revenue' over education ever time. humans suck
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I agree, but that ain't gonna fix $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.
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They aren't really worried about that ¯(ツ)/¯
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Eh, that’s only an issue in D1 schools. Many elite universities don’t have that issue and they are still insanely expensive.
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In B4 TiCkEt SaLeS.... as if the university couldn't use that money for literally anything else.
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I have accomplished very little in my life.
I have pissed off innumerable people, been ostracized, ghosted, fired, disowned, discarded, and deserved all of it.
I have never lived up to my potential. I've got less than zero ambition.
I have been a historically awful husband and/or boyfriend.
But I accomplished one thing:
I got my daughter through college with no debt.
While she did the work to get admitted and slog through the classes and deal with the remote classroom bullshit of the COVID era, I'm proud that I was able to pull my shit together just long enough to keep writing those godforsaken checks so she will never know the struggle of being shackled to a lifetime of crippling debt.
I did one good thing in this lifetime, and because it gave her opportunity, it was all worth it.
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It's stories like this that make me thankful that my children have EU citizenship and will never have to struggle through college debt and neither will we as their parents.
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It's comments like this that make me happy i didn't have kids (as a usa citizen)
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User name checks out
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My school was expensive but was marketed as cheaper. It was cheaper through scholarship, factored in Pell grants and did not comsider the extra fees from bureaucracy.
The problem is that when you try to work while paying for school the grants go down and you pay more and still struggle.
While you do this you see your school build a sports stadium and see host extravagant dinners with business clients. You see how much the president or dean makes and how much the professors make.
I gave up and transferred to a non-profit university and the experience was night and day. It was affordable and the staff worked for you.
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Look down at community colleges all day but I work with people doing the same job making the same pay (know your rights) but i don't have 35 years of debt.
I got into University - they wanted $8,000/semester. Community College across the street offered 4 year degrees for $1200/semester.
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Agreed! Community colleges are great, although the local one I attended was not without extraneous fees.
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Holy shit dude, for profits are fuckin terrible. Although, that being said, I don’t know of any for-profits that have sports teams or large stadiums.
And I would also add that academia doesn’t really pay that well, at least for professors. They could make much more in industry in a lot of cases
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Because there is no cap on student loans for the most part. Kids who just finished high school are sold on the concept of these loans without knowing what they are really getting into.
If a guy can't legally buy a beer, then they should not legally be allowed to sign up for 6 figure loans either
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Seems like an easy "hey you predators took advantage of me while I was young and naive" case.
And then watch all the self serving reasons why we allow this just catch on fire.
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You think that hasn’t happened already, like nobody has ever had that thought?
That’s what the entire student loan forgiveness from Biden was about, trying to eliminate people’s payments towards predatory student loans.
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There's literally no market incentives for it to be otherwise. Look at the factors.
50+ years of institutions and borrowers alike trained to believe that education debt is "good debt" that won't hurt them.
"Club ed" arms race of expensive non-education-related amenities, targeting students. Essentially it is marketing costs passed on to the student/borrower.
Heavy subsidization of student loans by state and federal governments.
Laws to make student loans not discharged in bankruptcy.
Constant implication that growing amounts of student debts can or should be "forgiven" by federal programs.
If you are the lending institution or the college, literally all of those factors only incentivize charging more.
Driving prices down would require meaningful competition or a feasible alternative. I have encouraged hiring managers to look at alternative credentialing and training for this reason. No bachelors degree is worth going $200k+ in debt for.
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Regarding your last point, I was an IT manager for a decade and hired many people. I saw no difference in the skill set between a community college grad with an Associate's and a grad with a Bachelor's from a prestigious university. The vast majority of skills simply don't translate from university to real life, so I don't understand why we still hold them so highly in IT. I can't speak to other fields, though.
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I very intentionally received only an associate's degree with the plan being to immediately get a job and start learning from there. It's worked great. Except that was 20 years ago and now many jobs "require" a bachelor's or otherwise have the nerve to say that 4 years of on the job experience is the same as 1 year of college.
In my experience, I've seen the same thing. The university time kick starts things. But university lessons are so different than real on the job work.
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Or regulation.
Driving prices down would require meaningful competition, or a feasible alternative, or regulation.
(Feasible alternatives do exist, eg trades, but are not treated as viable alternatives by society)
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Some states are ditching the bar exam for attorneys. You can become a lawyer by getting experience as a paralegal. It shouldn't be much different for other professionals.
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And people who actually do most of the work (aka grad students) are still not getting a living wage.
Support striking grad workers everyone! Search for the currently striking school, and donate to their strike fund if you can: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=support+grad+worker+strike&ia=web
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That’s actually highly variable. Some schools have come a long way in that regard
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It all started when they outlawed bankruptcy discharging student loans. Cry and cry over "Lawyers will graduate from college then immediately declare bankruptcy on $5000 loans!". Then, when they captured the students in inescapable debt, convinced everyone that college was the answer, and then Sallie May being put in charge of defaulted loans.... being paid to collect.... Federally guaranteed money.... It's like getting paid to get paid, perfect racket!
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Greed. It happened because for-profit schools are allowed to exist.
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For-profits aren’t really the problem though. They are a tiny tiny tiny fraction of higher ed. And Obama went after them pretty hard
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Fro profit schools are not the cause.
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My money is on government bailouts that are never gonna be payed back for the people running the institutions (not the teachers or any of the staff that actualy do things).
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I am going to riot if there is another bailout, I am so sick of that shit. The government should be buying these distressed properties at fire sale prices, firing management for running it into the ground, and fining the boards for running it into the ground.
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People finding out why religions banned usury
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And back then y'all could just move like 40 miles and become a whole other ass person. Now you're tracked literally around the entire globe forever.
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Yeah so they could corner the market on that shit instead lmao
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Eat the rich.
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Americans with income over $74,000 hold about 60% of the total public student loan debt
The holders of college debt are, relatively speaking, the rich in this scenario, lol. They're sure a lot richer than all the taxpayers who never went to college, who will be the primary ones footing the bill for any college debt forgiveness that occurs.
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It’s administrative bloat. All that money isn’t going to hire more professors. It’s going to pay for non-faculty admin staff who provide services to students and work to attract students to the school. Schools are in competition with each other and the trend has been towards providing an all-encompassing luxury experience. While at many schools the fancy buildings may be paid for in whole or in part by donations from rich people, government grants, or other non-tuition sources (endowment), the staffing and maintenance of these buildings is paid for by tuition.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is that students comparison shop four-year luxury “Club Ed” vacations, paid for with borrowed money. That student loans are available without collateral or credit history and automatically approved is a huge part of the problem. If the flow of money dries up, the bloat goes with it. But in the mean time only rich people would have access to an education.
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We as an entire community, species even, let it happen.
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It's my firm belief that until we acknowledge this we are not moving forward. I've said this to downvotes on numerous related topics where the response is always "blame the government" or "blame the corporations" or "blame the billionaires".
None of those excuses work because ultimately all of us are responsible for supporting a system that enables all those things and removes accountability from all but the ones who have no ability to change anything.
Collectively we need a good long look in the mirror about what is really important.
The other bigger problem is people have solutions. We've had solutions for decades if not centuries. Solutions no one wants to implement for a multitude of reasons of which a big one is "this is the way the system works".
Fuck the system. The system is broken. We need to all come to that conclusion and then we can move forward.
We aren't there yet.
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One class is doing it to another.
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I came up with a plan to lower college tuition years ago while tripping. It starts with the decriminalization of all drugs. And to prevent gangs and what not from profiting colleges will get the exclusive privilege of making and selling all drugs. Drug proceeds would be split between lowering tuition, setting up more college ran centers, and rehabilitation of drug users outside the colleges programs. With a small percentage allowed for the college to profit.
For the program itself, i would have the colleges set up drug manufacturing classes which should benefit students in other chemist and medical fields so it should draw in quite a few people. With the drugs made they then would be sold by college ran businesses whicj could also employ students to have on the job experience and to keep more money in the colleges sphere of influence.
At these centers where drugs are sold, there will also be areas for people to partake in the more dangerous drugs, which should be inheritly safer now that its not being tainted with other nonsense. There would be medical students watching and taking care of their patients making another facet of experience that will help in future jobs.
With all this taking place in the college system, and with plenty of opportunities to view patients, it should be easy to spot people who are in a real bad place that would benefit from health and life counseling. So for the people in need of help, counselors will approach giving an offer to participate in a program to train psychology students that comes with a heavy discount for their drugs while in the program.
My whole idea had several beneficial aspects for all of the country.
Lower colleges tuition
Raising the educational level of general poplus
Lower drug dependencies rates
Lower crime rates
Getting people help who need it
Reduction of drug over doses
Less burdens on are justice system clogged up with drug related crimes
Hampering outside nations who push dirty cheap drugs into our country
Extra tax money
Etc
Idk if anyone has any comments on my wistful thinking, but im open to revisions of my plan.
TLDR: Decrimnalize drugs and make collegese create dispense and sell said drugs to fund the well being of our society.
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This is a very American answer. The easy and best solution is to tax the ultra rich and provide college to all Americans.
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Jesus fucking christ this is the stupidest shit with the purest potential. I've never loved and hated anything so equally. I'm left completely indifferent.
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You're ambivalent not indifferent.
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This is legalizing drugs with extra steps. Tax the shops and manufacturers, direct that money split into social programs, safe centers staffed by professionals and school funds.
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Rich parents.
There’s really no other answer for this one. I went to a very nice university. The average person has no idea how many college students are coming from phenomenally high income families where price is essentially no issue.
It’s just a matter of how high up the top 10% is relative to everyone else. Both your parents are doctors and they have 18 years to save up - half a mill for Amy’s college bill is basically piss money.
The only problem is that these college students tend to grow up in areas where this is basically the norm. I had so many 19 year olds act flabbergasted that not only are neither of my parents doctors/lawyers/engineers… they didn’t even gasp go to college!
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There are a number of states where tuition is covered if you graduate from an in state high school and then go to an in state college or university. That's how I got my degree.
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Yep. Heck you can even go to a school with a program your state doesn’t offer and get in state tuition. That’s what I did. It was quite a bit cheaper than my wife’s BS. I also got a BS, but in a different field. We both went to the same out-of-state school and are from the same state.
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People are willing to pay it, therefore they will charge it.
We badly need people in the skilled trades. The jobs pay well, are in high demand, and don't require you go go into massive college debt.
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They also are not hiring, or require someone to help you get through the door, just like everything else these days. Telling people to do trade work is incredibly tone-deaf.
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Not to mention, most trades are "Dirty". Thanks, but no thanks, id rather work in a clean office with nice clean AC, minimal bugs and where the sun stays TF outta my face.
On the flip side, there's also people who see working 8 hours/day inside at a desk as a death sentence.
So saying "Just do a trade" isn't just tone deaf, it's as tone deaf as "Just go-to college"
The real answer is everyone should be able to take the education path best suited for them and their career choices
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I teach electrical and we take 40 a year in my county, just electrical. We have plumbing and pipefitting and HVAC programs as well. The union program is down the road.
You just have to look for the programs, generally through a local community college. I’d gladly teach the respondent above you.
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Which trades are you referring to?
I live close by to a community college that allows basically anyone to fairly quickly (1-2 yrs) get into a trade. I know several people who did. It’s not “easy” in the sense that yeah, you’re still learning a whole fucking skillset and trying to land your first adult job, but it’s definitely… extremely doable…?
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For $100000 you can start your own company.
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Uneducated people are willing to pay that much. It should be considered predatory lending to sign up a 19 year old for $100k of debt
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The government also made huge student loans widely available. So government tried to narrow the wealth gap. In response, colleges just raised their prices, and students were forced to take out bigger and bigger loans.
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Yep. You hand out tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who haven't yet had to balance a bank account and it's going to get spent en-mass. Why go to a trade school or a community college when you can go to [insert most expensive school that accepted you]?
A potential solution here is to cap the maximum amount of loan that is immune to bankruptcy discharge. This will have the effect of depressing the total amount of loans an average student has access to and force colleges to follow suit if they want to see continued enrollment.
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It really depends on the scholarships. If they offer common merit based scholarships that bring it down to single digits of thousands, I'd think it's okay. Same with demographics based scholarships or registered need. You'd be using the rich dumb students to subsidize making the better students pay less.
But I have a feeling a lot of places are just price gouging, not subsidizing from the rich kids.
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Just to keep the poor out of studying or to get them in debt for the rest of their life, easy peasy round business..
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Scam bubble
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It got this way because younger people are willing to go into debt to get an education, and schools take advantage of that expected level of debt. I highly recommend looking up certificates that are available. One of the best ways to change this is for people to switch to alternatives.
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I've stopped caring about shit like this because they get what? Another generation or 2 of offspring before the payback for all the shit we've done comes to roost? Great, some people's kids will get to continue to believe we're just fine while 95% of the planet burns ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
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Some were 20 years ago.
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Twenty years ago the going rate at private liberal arts colleges in the US was $40k/yr (including room and board). What is an example of a school that was charging 2.5x that?
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Mine was 65k 20 years ago. I’m pretty sure I can find a more prestigious school than mine who charges more.
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Neoliberals.
Their "logic" went something like this
- College grads make more money
- Therefore a degree is worth a lot of money
- The fairest tax is the people making the most money pay the most returning the investment that the state put into them
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I always imagine it going:
Uni admin: “They’re approving kids for how much?! Well fuck $3000 a semester, let’s triple it!”
And now universities depend on that increased revenue and there’s no simple way to roll it back.
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When I was in college a long time ago, my econ prof said as much; that demand was inelastic and they could hike it up to $20k a semester and still fill seats.
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It actually all started from an innocent place iirc. Schools wanted to give more aid to disadvantaged students after the civil rights movement, so they jacked up prices on rich kids to accommodate. Then it just sort of spun out of control
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it is time employers start telling graduates from such institutions interviewing for a job to go fuck themselves
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Why don’t all these employers just need to stop hiring students from elite universities! That’ll fix… something?
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that's a good repetition of what I said.
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125 comments
Greed. Get ready because they’re coming for free public k-12 next.
Nah. They just want to cut funding, not cut it completely. They need the dumb kids to grow up to be dumb workers and dumb voters. And to keep their own children in private schools to continue to rule over the poors.
Ah, but cutting it completely means they could potentially go back to child labour, and they've already been trying to set the ground work for it
You must live in a state where charter schools aren't part of normal political discourse. It is happening, and it is what they're striving for. They want the private schools, yes, but the mostly want unregulated for-profit religious charter schools where there is no oversight in what kids are taught (or if they're taught)
There's a real and important underlying reason you're completely missing.