When will the college tuition bubble burst?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

for you post, capping student visas, or limiting them to graduate and post graduate work seems like another good fix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

Those are easy targets to pick on, they don't actually make up a significant portion of spending by colleges and universities. And they're typically paid for with fees, rather than tuition itself. I'm sure they do play a role in the cost of college, but instruction itself is still what's driving the costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^ Thoughtful post. Don’t forget bloated administration.

Let me thank you for your thoughtful, nuanced post by adding my typical right wing catchphrase

[Anonymous]

The biggest rise in college costs is due to bloated administration. I'm a professor, and over the last twenty years, I have seen an exponential increase in the number of vice-provosts, vice-deans, offices of XYZ, etc. Many of these administrators, especially at the senior level, are paid as if they were corporate executives, with salaries hovering around 7-figures at some universities (and not necessarily the best ones, either).
This all comes unfortunately at the expense of full-time faculty. To be sure, full-time faculty are expensive, but they are paid far, far less than what people imagine. Most faculty in the humanities and social sciences earn well under 6-figures. In the hard sciences, they earn a bit more, but a fraction of what upper-level administrators earn and certainly less than what they'd earn in private industry.
This means that students get the short end of the stick. The pay high tuition for being taught by adjuncts, who have no job security and work for less than $5000 per class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

Those are easy targets to pick on, they don't actually make up a significant portion of spending by colleges and universities. And they're typically paid for with fees, rather than tuition itself. I'm sure they do play a role in the cost of college, but instruction itself is still what's driving the costs.

I would have though the cost of instruction is crashing now that more schools are relying on non-tenure track associate professors to pick up more and more of the teaching load

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The biggest rise in college costs is due to bloated administration. I'm a professor, and over the last twenty years, I have seen an exponential increase in the number of vice-provosts, vice-deans, offices of XYZ, etc. Many of these administrators, especially at the senior level, are paid as if they were corporate executives, with salaries hovering around 7-figures at some universities (and not necessarily the best ones, either).
This all comes unfortunately at the expense of full-time faculty. To be sure, full-time faculty are expensive, but they are paid far, far less than what people imagine. Most faculty in the humanities and social sciences earn well under 6-figures. In the hard sciences, they earn a bit more, but a fraction of what upper-level administrators earn and certainly less than what they'd earn in private industry.
This means that students get the short end of the stick. The pay high tuition for being taught by adjuncts, who have no job security and work for less than $5000 per class.

Another professor here and I completely agree. (I am non-tenure track but a full-time instructor and make $65k for 9 months of work/year, with a PhD and years of work experience).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Education is information. Information does not require land, buildings, food service, tenure, millions of employees. Any field involving information is under tremendous pressure. The economic fallout from Covid hasn’t hit yet but it is going to. Tuition will be under assault.

you can attend the great courses now via audile. Do that for four years, put it on a resume and see how it works for you. The sheet of paper is what your paying for

Disagree. Connections is what you are paying for.

Connections are the old guard. Kids these days are way more disconnected (in my opinion in a bad way). Going forward not respected and not what it used to be. Efficiency is the enemy of unearned excess.

not remotely true

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

Those are easy targets to pick on, they don't actually make up a significant portion of spending by colleges and universities. And they're typically paid for with fees, rather than tuition itself. I'm sure they do play a role in the cost of college, but instruction itself is still what's driving the costs.

Somewhere between half and three-quarters of the instruction is done by adjuncts who are paid an average of $3000 per three-credit class. That's not what is driving the costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

Those are easy targets to pick on, they don't actually make up a significant portion of spending by colleges and universities. And they're typically paid for with fees, rather than tuition itself. I'm sure they do play a role in the cost of college, but instruction itself is still what's driving the costs.

Somewhere between half and three-quarters of the instruction is done by adjuncts who are paid an average of $3000 per three-credit class. That's not what is driving the costs.

Perhaps I was loose with terminology. I meant the overall costs to provide instruction, including institutional support and academic facilities. Not just the cost of instructors/professors/etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest rise in college costs is due to bloated administration. I'm a professor, and over the last twenty years, I have seen an exponential increase in the number of vice-provosts, vice-deans, offices of XYZ, etc. Many of these administrators, especially at the senior level, are paid as if they were corporate executives, with salaries hovering around 7-figures at some universities (and not necessarily the best ones, either).
This all comes unfortunately at the expense of full-time faculty. To be sure, full-time faculty are expensive, but they are paid far, far less than what people imagine. Most faculty in the humanities and social sciences earn well under 6-figures. In the hard sciences, they earn a bit more, but a fraction of what upper-level administrators earn and certainly less than what they'd earn in private industry.
This means that students get the short end of the stick. The pay high tuition for being taught by adjuncts, who have no job security and work for less than $5000 per class.

Another professor here and I completely agree. (I am non-tenure track but a full-time instructor and make $65k for 9 months of work/year, with a PhD and years of work experience).

I'm about 15 years removed from the university setting, but I guess I have a hard time imagining that there are enough senior-level administrators to really have a significant impact on the overall budgets. But there does seem to be a lot more academic support programs (and obviously associated costs) for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

for you post, capping student visas, or limiting them to graduate and post graduate work seems like another good fix.

Wouldn't that make it worse? Foreign students are essentially subsidizing educational costs for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The biggest rise in college costs is due to bloated administration. I'm a professor, and over the last twenty years, I have seen an exponential increase in the number of vice-provosts, vice-deans, offices of XYZ, etc. Many of these administrators, especially at the senior level, are paid as if they were corporate executives, with salaries hovering around 7-figures at some universities (and not necessarily the best ones, either).
This all comes unfortunately at the expense of full-time faculty. To be sure, full-time faculty are expensive, but they are paid far, far less than what people imagine. Most faculty in the humanities and social sciences earn well under 6-figures. In the hard sciences, they earn a bit more, but a fraction of what upper-level administrators earn and certainly less than what they'd earn in private industry.
This means that students get the short end of the stick. The pay high tuition for being taught by adjuncts, who have no job security and work for less than $5000 per class.

Another professor here and I completely agree. (I am non-tenure track but a full-time instructor and make $65k for 9 months of work/year, with a PhD and years of work experience).

I'm about 15 years removed from the university setting, but I guess I have a hard time imagining that there are enough senior-level administrators to really have a significant impact on the overall budgets. But there does seem to be a lot more academic support programs (and obviously associated costs) for students.

A LOT has changed in 15 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm in academia. There are a lot of factors at play here of course. On the spending side, potential students show up and want to see how nice our non-academic facilities are, like the student center, cafeteria, dorms, and athletic facilities. That all costs money and drives our costs up.

Then on the consumer side, it's sort of a moral hazard. Student loan money is basically free, with no thought given to your ability to pay it back later. You can get just as much student loan money if you are studying social work or elementary education as if you are studying computer science. I'm leaving the societal benefit of each aside -- just it's a fact that some professions pay more than others. Colleges can raise tuition, then the student loans will rise to cover that increase. Not much incentive to keep tuition down.

Then you have foreign students. By law, they are not eligible for financial aid. The middle class in China (for example) is larger than the entire US population. It's very prestigious for your kid to study in the US, even at third-tier schools. Universities love them because they pay the full tuition. The number of these students has increased greatly over the last few years. That means you have a bunch of foreign students ready to pay full fare, along with well-off American residents ready to pay full fare, and lower income level students armed with student loans ready to pay slightly discounted tuition (the university will find some financial aid, often from hapless donors, to cover the difference).

Where I think we will see _some_ focus on value is at 2nd and 3rd tier schools. There's less of a "name" to sell on, and they tend to draw only regionally not nationally.

The fix is to limit student loans, but that's politically untenable.

for you post, capping student visas, or limiting them to graduate and post graduate work seems like another good fix.

removing a large group of consumers who do not care about price would force schools to either look much more closely at cost or to compete over a smaller pool of domestic consumers who don't care about price, but that group isn't large enough to make up the gap, so cost cutting will have to occur

Wouldn't that make it worse? Foreign students are essentially subsidizing educational costs for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IDK but we make close to 300k and aren’t sending our kids to private schools because we think the tuition is ridiculous!

You looked at the wrong privates. At that income (for the strong student) there are many privates that will discount well below the public school cost. Not the top 30 schools but solid colleges in the top 100.

Please enlighten me. Sone schools we briefly considered were Wakeforest, Emory, Tulane, and Lafayette, Washington and Lee and Lafayette. From everything we could see, we would be full pay. It’s not worth it when our in-state option is probably UVA and/or William and Mary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IDK but we make close to 300k and aren’t sending our kids to private schools because we think the tuition is ridiculous!

Same. Some friends of ours just announced on Facebook that their daughter go into Duke, where I’m pretty sure they’ll be full pay and my initial thought was “Suckers”. Ours is going to a small public for less than a third of the price and has a better chance to do research and eventually end up in med school.

Yeah they're real losers

Not sure the PPs kid will have better options (small public) doesn’t ring great but I do think graduates from top publics can do as well or better than many graduates of elite schools for much less money.