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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am not interested in judging how other people spend their money. Showing off wealth is a life style sure.

I am just really curious why college tuition keep increasing yoy, it is not even tied to any performance benchmark. [/quote]

Sounds like you aren’t interested in looking further than your navel.

Are you really not aware of how these schools spend money and why tuition has gone up?
Low class ratios and nice facilities don’t grow on trees. 
[b]Also, much of the student experience is subjective. It isn’t just what you learn, but how you feel about the experience.[/b]
Also, remember most kids are not paying full freight. The rich are subsidizing the less-well-off.

[/quote]

Did you know that in a study participants were presented with two glasses of wine and told one is from a $100 bottle and one is from a $20 bottle (roughly), and they consistently rated the $100 wine much higher across every metric?

The trick?  It’s the exact same wine.[/quote]

LOL, nice try. That trick might work for wine, but it won’t work for something you have to live and breathe for 4 years.

Have someone look at a $650,000 old 1000 square foot house and then a $1.2 mil updated 2500 square foot house in the same area. But switch the price tags and try to trick them!
Do you really think that someone will believe that the fake “$1.2 mil” 1000 square foot house is “better” than the updated 2500 square foot house because it has a higher price tag?

I get your point, since I have a relative who refuses to buy store-brand foods because she believes them inferior. But hardly comparable to the bigger ticket items and experiences in life.[/quote]

The bigger, more expensive, updated house might be a total POS and the older, less expensive, smaller house might be a charming well-crafted quality home.  I could EASILY believe the price tags could be switched and you’d have people calling it fair.  I’m shocked that you can’t.

Are you a product of a school that would be 90K today, by any chance?[/quote]

I think you kind of proved my point. So the 2500 house might be a POS, yes, that is one possibility. The bigger point is that in comparing these houses and their prices, one might be prompted to ask questions and investigate, and ask WHY the seemingly nicer home is priced lower.  
You would ask questions, you would get inspections done, you compare property taxes, schools, and myriad other things. 
 You would not simply accept at face value that the home with the higher price is better or worse, right? [/quote]

That was not remotely your point.  See the bolded word for a clue as to where you’ve gone wrong.  Hint: In your argument as presented YOU have accepted one house as better than the other based on price and rather arbitrary criteria such as how new and how big, none of which suggests any concern about real quality or value.  To you, expensive + big + new = better.  There are people on the other side of the coin to whom expensive + small + old = better.  So I repeat, I could EASILY believe the price tags could be switched and significant chunk of the population would evaluate accordingly.  (e.g. Small, old, inexpensive is gross; small, old, and expensive is classic and charming.  Big, new, and expensive = luxurious; hug, new, inexpensive = builder grade garbage that will fall apart in five years.)

“Do you really think that someone will believe that the [b]fake[/b] “$1.2 mil” 1000 square foot house is “better” than the updated 2500 square foot house because it has a higher price tag?”

I must ask again, are you a product of one of these expensive institutions? [/quote]

Nope, I went to an inexpensive college no one in DCUM ever talks about, and have no debt. Must be why I’m such a stupid old sod, eh?

You are right about new construction being generally not that great, so maybe this isn’t the best example. [b]But you are still FOS on principal. [/b]

I’ll try again: let’s say you are planning a vacation to Mexico for spring break. You can spend 2k or 15k. [b]You can have a wonderful experience either way. [/b]It will be a different experience at 2k (less-than-ideal flights, riding public buses, staying in cheap hotels, enjoying walking around a city, eating local food) or 15k (ideally timed nonstop flight, private transit, expensive resorts and activities) but either way, you will have taken a vacation to Mexico. By your logic, they are the same thing, right? A vacation to Mexico is a vacation to Mexico. So you’re wondering why would anyone ever do the 15k version, or are you just insisting they only do it due to the perception of luxury?

[/quote]

Yes, assuming some minimum baseline is met (in this case having a wonderful experience) they are in fact the same thing except your luxurious version costs five times as much.

But I’m FOS because?  You don’t like what I’m saying?[/quote]

Ah, ok. Well that explains your way of thinking.

An apartment is the same as a house because they both give you a place to live. 
A Kia Soul the same as a Lexus RX because they both get you from A to B. 
Illinois State the same as Yale because you can get a BS at both.

So you’re right, if your goal is to simply get the degree in hand, then cheaper is better. 
What you don’t seem to understand or acknowledge is that many,[b] probably most people care about many more things than simply getting the degree in hand.[/b]

We are not full pay at our kid’s 90k sticker price school, but I am paying more than our cheapest option because the school DS will attend has retention and graduation rates in the high 90s, as well as an extremely high grad acceptance rate in his desired post baccalaureate program.
Additionally, it is a smaller school where the higher staff to student ratio will make it easier to build meaningful relationships with faculty. DS plays his sport there, giving him a built-in friend group and structure. It is worth it to us to pay more for these things that we value, and I can see how a wealthier family would be willing to pay up to 90k for similar reasons. My son will not have loans, and it was a priority for us to get him through college without loans. Having had loans and spent my 20s paying them off, it did limit me somewhat and I don’t want that for him. If it had come down to that, he would be attending another school to avoid loans. And I would bet that the vast majority of families going through this process right now are not as willing to obtain debt as they might have 20 years ago, because they are now seeing how a degree no longer guarantees a high income.

If you don’t care about other people’s reasons to pay more, fine. No one is forcing you to pay 90k anywhere, or even 45k or 30k. Just go to the cheaper school, because it’s the same to you anyway.[/quote]

You’re mixing your analogies, ma’am.  You sound totally unhinged.  A wonderful vacation is a wonderful vacation.  The expensive version might indeed be even MORE wonderful, but is it 13k more wonderful?  Is it five years worth of also wonderful vacations more wonderful?

Apartments and houses are both places to live, so in that sense they are the same.  Apartments are often BETTER than houses, if you can believe it!  Once again, your silly housing analogy doesn’t take into account quality or value, so YOU are the one missing the point here.  Would you rather live in an apartment in Paris or a giant house in rural Kentucky?  You can prioritize what you like, but to declare that one is obviously better because it’s a house is stupid.

[b]The things you talk about are akin to saying the expensive car is obviously worth it because it has a steering wheel and a radio. [/b] Or the house is better than the apartment because it has a toilet and a sink.  Again, you can get a good education at most colleges and universities.  You can build relationships with faculty and peers, you can participate in sports and other activities, you can graduate on time and go on to grad school.

You’re arguing that the brand of toilet is what makes the house better than the apartment, and the sad part is you don’t even realize it.[/quote]

I’m genuinely confused now.
The bolded is the exact opposite of what I would say. I would say that the more expensive car would be worth it to someone who can afford it and values a quiet interior with less road noise, more comfortable seating, and a longer lasting and highly reliable car. 
Of course, you are going to come back and say “Gotcha! the expensive car is actually garbage! The engine is full of sawdust!!” because that seems to be your game.[/quote]

The steering wheel and the radio are the basics, honey.  Just like establishing relationships with faculty, making friends, participating in extracurriculars, and graduating on time are the basics of any decent school (including even non-flagship state schools).

What else you got?[/quote]

Except that at a lot of those schools, even ones I would send my kid to if those were our choices,[b] don’t have the same levels of retention and 4 year graduation, [/b]nor the same career outcomes. Lucky for us it worked out to go to the one that does.[/quote]

These outcomes are entirely dependent on your child.  Do you not believe your kid is capable of graduating on time?  Are you paying 90K for school because he needs a babysitter to hold his hand for four years?  I suppose that at least would be a valid reason to pay more…[/quote]

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