[AlexdeLarge]

Commentators have increasingly been wondering if the end might finally be in sight for the many years’ worth of steady and often not-so-slow increases in college tuitions. How much longer, the thinking goes, will American students and parents be able to afford — and/or put up with — rapidly rising prices and expenditures on higher education?

Tuition Bubble

[TreeFarmer]

College tuition has been hit with a double whammy for 25+ years now, that is why it has been going up so fast. What was this double whammy? Inflation and states putting less and less of their budgets toward higher education each year.

The result was that colleges had to raise tuition enough to cover inflation and reduced state support.

TF

[retiredguy]

Good post. I've been pondering this issue for the past few months.

My alma mater just laid off 47 staff. The cost of a liberal arts major might soon outweigh the benefits.

[gnm]

My alma mater just laid off 47 staff. The cost of a liberal arts major might soon outweigh the benefits.

Soon?! I know people with BS/MS (sciences) and even PhD's who are having trouble finding a decent job.....

Benefits? Like what? Do you get head waiter instead if you have a degree?

-G

[Windmills]

I heard it said that another part of the problem is too much federal money, loans mostly, being thrown at college students. It sounds like a decent idea on the part of the government, to support education, but colleges react by jacking up their tuition. They want to get their hands on every last federal dollar, and the way to do it is to force students via higher tution to ask for every last federal dollar they can get, usually in loans. Colleges have become businesses, intent on churning out kids as fast as possible in order to increase their rates of income. They've also been cracking down on students that take more than 4 years to graduate. I wonder if that has anything to do with keeping the money flowing as fast as possible.

[Tyler_JC]

I heard it said that another part of the problem is too much federal money, loans mostly, being thrown at college students. It sounds like a decent idea on the part of the government, to support education, but colleges react by jacking up their tuition. They want to get their hands on every last federal dollar, and the way to do it is to force students via higher tution to ask for every last federal dollar they can get, usually in loans. Colleges have become businesses, intent on churning out kids as fast as possible in order to increase their rates of income. They've also been cracking down on students that take more than 4 years to graduate. I wonder if that has anything to do with keeping the money flowing as fast as possible.

You have to pay for every semester you spend in college.

So I doubt they would try to make people graduate on time if it were simply a business decision.

They want you to graduate on time because...they want you to graduate on time. There's no malicious intent there. Most college professors and advisers fundamentally have the students' interests at heart.

The excessive use of loans is a problem. It allows universities to raise the price tag, knowing that you will borrow money to pay the bills.

That being said, few students pay the actual sticker price. Most colleges offer some kind of needs based grants.

They are trying to hit everyone on the income spectrum for as much money as they can pay. It's an attempt to maximize revenue...and it works.

The other problem is that tuition sticker price is associated with quality. The "good" schools cost a lot of money. We "know" they are good because they cost so much. It's the same deal with cars or wine or anything else. Cost is associated with quality and vice versa. Colleges have to raise the sticker price because they need to compete in the perceived quality game.

I call tuition a sticker price because, like a car, most people are successful in negotiating the price down. Harvard, for example, does not expect students whose parents earn less than $60,000/year to pay ANY tuition at all. Granted, that's an exceptional case but if you look at most colleges for most middle income people, you won't be expected to pay the full amount.

[mgibbons19]

Easy college loans work the same way easy house loans do.

If everybody has the same access to easy credit, then the prices adjust up and nothing really changes.

And since everybody has access to this money, the colleges respond by trying to be as competitive as possible. But it's hard to sell college on the value proposition. Especially as most of the liberal arts classics are 15$ or less at the Barnes and Noble. So instead they go for the creature comforts of nice new dorms and exercise centers. It's been a while since students lived in poverty in cinder-block dorms with. But man do they pay for it later.

It's untenable really, and I would expect adjustments at some point. The question is, what will those adjustments look like?

[Pretorian]

Why do you even go there? There are hundreds of free universities or ones with symbolic fee. For example, you get your high-school equivalent certificate or whatever that is by the age of 14 or 15. You enroll into a foreign medical school same year, for $1000-$1500 per year or so. Free, if lucky enough. You graduate in 6 years. Come back and get yourself into the residency. 2, 3, 4 years later you are out ready to cut people open for lots of money.
23, 24, 25 yo practicing doctor with no debt. Who said something about Liberal Arts for $6000 a year?

[Schmuto]

The problem with tuition is simple.

A nation of fat ass lazy kids who are given an opportunity to put off life for 4-6 years dicking around getting loaded and laid.

Put that together with a high GDP based on cheap oil and the notion that every kid who gets Cs or better in HS should go to college, and you have demand go through the roof.

1950 - only the rich go to college.
1960 - only the rich or the driven go to college.
1970 - same as 1960, but now women too, dramatically increasing demand.
1980 - the rich, the driven, or the upwardly mobile middle class. Women still gaining.
1990 - the rich, the driven, the upwardly mobile lower class, and all middle class and above.
2000 - any dumb f-ck with a pencil.

That's Carlin. "Got a pencil? Get the f-ck in there, it's physics."

So now we're going to see the reverse take place until, about 2050, only the rich are going to be going to college.

That the credit bubble popped will obviously have an immediate and enormous impact.

The fact is, 75% of the dumb SOBs going to college nowadays would be better off skipping it altogether - they will get nothing useful out of it and it won't prepare them for any job that will be available.

Further, if you're paying more than 20k a year to go to college and you're not in a top 20 school or so, you're a complete moron.

To spend 40k for a cozy little, mediocre liberal arts college set in some sleepy knoll in rural - -- - somewhere - - is insane. The days of cheap oil are over, as are the days when middle class families have their kids go 150k into debt to a BA in sociology from dumb-f-ck-U.

[Pretorian]

You write very well Schmutto. One day I'll be selling your posts for a fee.

[outcast]

The big problem with tuition is that the college budget is a black hole, we seldom know where any of it goes.

[ReverseEngineer]

If you look at the history of higher education in terms of the Universities, you have to go back and look at the founding of Universities like Cambridge and Oxford in England and Leipzig in Germany as the most succesful and overall influential in terms of western thought. The only folks who went to these places came from the class in power and as they really took hold through the Enlightenment what they came up with really did transform society in many ways, not the least of which was Economics of course.

Anyhow, this migrated to the colonies with William & Mary, U of P, Harvard and Yale founded in the 1600s, followed by more still as the US expanded after the Revolutionary War. Still of course University Education was limited to those in the ruling class, everybody else basically had to work from puberty onward and a 6th grade education was pretty good through the 1800s.

It was in the post WWII era that the idea EVERYBODY should go to College really took hold. The idea in many respects true was that if you got a College Education it was a Ticket to Financial Success later in life. The problem being of course this is a Ponzi Scheme in Reverse, what you end up with is too many people with degrees and too few real jobs that pay well to employ these folks. Its an Iverted Pyriamid.

If it was a pure Meritocracy, money would not have anything to do with whether you got to go to College or not, it would be strictly about how capable you were of doing the kind of thinking such places dish out, and for a while while there was some surplus around to fund some people just because they were smart you got the scholarshipping thing going, and so in a University like Columbia you would find some rich dopes and some poor brains all in the same classes.

Meanwhile for the Hoi Polloi, more local Community Colleges were built as the growing technological base of society required somewhat better educated people, and you also got Trade schools as well to supplement the education after HS.

The thing is here, you really do not need all that many people educated all that long to perform most of the work in society, and gradually over time you produce more and more very well educated people who just cannot find a job that relates in ANY way to what they learned. Economically speaking, these institutions are very expensive to run and maintain, and in the end there aren't really enough productive jobs out there to get with the education you have.

It is of some value to have some well educated people in your society, but its not really clear just how many of them you really need or can support through the learning process. At the same time, if you take away or limit the availability of higher education to all the members of your society, you abrogate the concept of Equal Opportunity upon which theoretically the American society is based. Whether it is a Meritocracy based on your Intellect as measured by IQ score or SAT score or a Monetocracy which only allows you access to higher education if you have the Money to pay for it, in either case you say to the vast population of your society, "Hey, you got NO CHANCE here to succeed! You are either not smart enough or rich enough to get access to this learning". This is in direct conflict with the concept of equal opportunity.

I never liked at all the idea you needed a "Sheepskin" from a Respected University to be "qualified" to do a certain job. Its quite possible to educate yourself, long as you like to read anyhow. As an employer in the sense I interview potential employees to work in my business though I don't own it, I can tell in a 30 minute interview whether a person has the qualities and brains necessary to do the kind of work I have to offer. Some might have a Sheepskin, others do not but its just not all that important either way.

In any event, with the spin down here, University education as it has been pursued in the post WWII era is going the way of the Dinosaur, but even the Monetocracy based education that goes back to the 1100s is going that way also. Harvard's Endowment has taken an enormous hit here, and given the state Britain is in I am sure Oxford and Cambridge are in equally bad shape. The folks who might have sent their kids to these schools are Offing themselves as their Hedge Funds go Belly Up also. Its another scheme that just doesn't work too well once you have a Monetary System Collapse.

So what of the future of higher education? As long as the Internet holds up, I'd bet on education decentralizing further off traditional campuses and people learning stuff by surfing the net for it. I don't see that holding up all that long though. Retaining Books and Libraries is the most important thing as far as not losing the Knowledge Base we accumulated, and given the Bible managed to last 2000 years, with the plethora of reproduction of texts since Gutenberg, I don't think it will all be lost as much was with the Burning of the Great Library at Alexandria.

Once we pass the Zero Point here, once the Great Die Off has spent itself, in some form those who value knowledge will pull together information again, and if there is enough surplus in the societies that emerge we will once again have something like the University, where teachers and students come together to discuss ideas and generate new ones. It will be a long time in coming though, as it would be my best guess we are entering a New Dark Age which will last 300 years or more. It will be up to individuals to preserve the RESPECT for knowledge and to pass that respect on to the generations which follow us. This is something everyone can do to some extent, either with your own children or the children of others. Its the most important job left here as our society crashes down around us. The KNOWLEDGE must NOT be lost forever. It should be passed on from one to the next as the Gold that it TRULY is. There is nothing of more value in the world than this, and it must be PROTECTED.

Reverse Engineer

[vision-master]

Like those computer geeks that think every problem with an HVAC system can be solved by changing some parameters on the building automation system. The only thing 'normaly closed' with them is their heads. What a bunch of edjamcated dumbies.

[JoeW]

I would think you guys would have a little more sympathy for individuals who took out $100,000 in loans to get a degree and then weren't even taught the stuff they needed to know to do their first job.
And whose fault is it that a company chose to replace experienced designers with fresh college graduates? Is it the college graduates' fault? If someone offers you a job when you need one, you take it. You don't spend your time worrying about who you've just replaced.
Employers want trained workers, but don't want to train them.
Universities want your money, and aren't really looking to give you the skills you need to succeed.

[bodigami]

(...) The KNOWLEDGE must NOT be lost forever. It should be passed on from one to the next as the Gold that it TRULY is. There is nothing of more value in the world than this, and it must be PROTECTED.

Reverse Engineer

Life is more important than knowledge; and the knowledge is worthless if it is used to degrade life.

[ReverseEngineer]

(...) The KNOWLEDGE must NOT be lost forever. It should be passed on from one to the next as the Gold that it TRULY is. There is nothing of more value in the world than this, and it must be PROTECTED.

Reverse Engineer

Life is more important than knowledge; and the knowledge is worthless if it is used to degrade life.

Therin lies the important if, and why if you are to have sentience, it needs to be used responsibly. I'd argue though that for the sentient being, knowledge and life are an equivalence, one is not more important than the other because they are one in the same thing. If you want to argue against sentience, thats another tangent and you have to ask yourself the question of why it exists at all? why are there self aware creatures running around anyhow?

Reverse Engineer

[ReverseEngineer]

You have no idea how frustrating it is to look at the jobs that are available these days, and see that, for one reason or another a degree is required. And then you look at the pay, and it is $10.00 an hour! WTF? Who in their right mind went to college, got a sheepskin, then wants a $10.00 to $12.00 an hour job?
Take my wife for instance. She has well over 10 years experience doing payroll, HR, and AP work, for school systems and large waste management companies. Yet so many of the same jobs that are available now require a degree, and pay less than she made in all of her previous jobs. And they will not hire her because of lack of said degree. I guess no one can think for themselves anymore.

One more example. I worked at Northrop Grumman on the B-2 Stealth Bomber program for 11 years. When I first started as an inspector there, we had all these great engineers, some of whom were responsible for the design and systems we were working on at the time. After about 4 years, some of these started to get the boot, and were replaced by newbies with a pigskin. .....

....For the most part I do not think highly of "degreed" individuals. All it produced was a bunch of folks that know how to cook books! And now it is all crashing down because of them.
Congratulations!

The examples you cite are typical of the Sheepskin Problem. You have on the one hand people with a Diploma that supposedly means they Know Something but Know Nothing; then on the other hand those without a diploma which says in its absence the person Who Knows Something Knows Nothing. Why did the Sheepskin then evolve, when practical ability seems the more important quality?

It means you went to the right club and got educated the right way to work within the structure of the Global Elite. To get the really plum jobs at the big banks, you had to have your degrees from the right schools. You don't even get the interviews without Harvard or MIT somewhere on your CV. Also true of all the big old Corporate Law Firms. Is it really because these schools produce so much better brains? Not really, but for the core Old School these were the places you drew from to make sure that your company was at least intellectually Blue Blooded.

As the society grew, you developed a kind of cloning of this idea, with more State Universities and smaller localized oligarchies developing, and its all systematized thorugh the Sheepskins. How can you know if somebody knows something unless they have a Sheepskin? No Sheepskin from a Med Skule you can't practice medicine, even if you spent your life reading up on everything published and knowing more about more diseases than anybody could possibly learn in just 4 years at a Med Skule. To prevent "Quackery" however and to assure a homogenous product of a specific type of medicine is provided to the population, this is regulated in this way. Just as you must have specific Licenses as a housing contractor to be sure all your stuff is up to Code, to again protect the Public from Unscrupulous Contractors who will do a shoddy job, resulting in floors collapsing, etc.

Sheepskins, Licensing, its all a systematization and form of regulation of society that becomes ever more tangled and ever more intrusive all the time. You get layers of bureaucracy on top of all this stuff, forms that need to be filled out and Inspectors who come in to check the quality of your work etc etc etc. Obviously among the worst of these layered bureacracies is the Medical Profession itself, now sinking under all the weight of different means to regulate its existence. One doctor probably needs at least 4 administrative personnel to fill out all the forms and keep all the records, which granted provides some jobs for additional people but also drives up the cost of the medical care nonstop in a vicious cycle where still more regulation is required. Its hardly the "No Big Goobermint" world the neocons dream of, and in the end the burdens of the bureaucracy are like the burdens of a monetary system after a while, and it all comes crashing down.

The issue now of course would be that part of this bureaucracy are the essential Big Gooberment Nanny State systems of Police, Firemen and Sanitation, which all are undergoing layoffs as local Goobermints face shrinking reserves of Tax Money, and Bailout money not necessarily arriving in time or in sufficient quantity to keep said systems operating without resorting to IOUs. How long behind them our Military is remains to be seen, they would of course be about the last left unfunded by Funny Money. That FM however won't buy any Oil, so the Soldiers will just have to go out and Steal It to keep themselves and the TPTB at the top of the Food Chain. Until such time as the social order breaks down too far anyhow and the soldiers start fighting amongst themselves for whatever scraps are left.

You can see all the systems unwinding here, but it still remains unclear just how long its going to take for a complete spin down, and what means will be used to try to stave off the inevitable anarchy to come? Each day though it inches closer, and for some already unemployed, its almost here as the Welfare money runs out. Each person will have their own personal TEOTWAWKI, until so many have experienced that that as a society it will be upon us. Counting down the Days.

Reverse Engineer

[Pretorian]

Employers want trained workers, but don't want to train them.
Universities want your money, and aren't really looking to give you the skills you need to succeed.

This is an essence of life itself-- to try to give less than you get. Nothing could or would exist othervise