Why is college tuition in the USA so expensive?

[Tempguy]

I agree. Pretty astute.

I'll just add in athletics. Huge sports programs are a money maker for schools so they spend a lot on stadiums and shit. It's a messed up system overall and the bubble will burst in our lifetimes. Count on that.

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Most of our colleges cost 2x more than they bring in through tuition, they aren't making a profit from students.

I don't buy that. When "for profit" colleges are a thing, I refuse to buy that colleges do not make money from students. If it was not a good deal we would not have so many U of Phoenix type schools pop up.

[melodramocracy]

Because people pay it. If an institution can rake in the bucks, and afford to pay someone like Shirley Ann Jackson over 7 million per year as school president, why wouldn't they?

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the bubble will burst in our lifetimes.

Good. It needs to.

[fredlig]

I dunno anymore, I hate all the things that I liked when I was a kid.

I wanted to go into computer programming/development as a kid, though. (This was in 1996, so it didn't seem like such a cliche to me back then like it does today)

Got good grades, was a Mensa member, scored top 2% in my ACT and high (but I don't remember exactly how high) on my SAT, but just couldn't get the money to go anywhere. /shrugFace

You should consider working at programming a bit. Unlike most big-money skills, there is very little cost associated with building a portfolio that shows your craft. Due to ongoing work shortages, if you are willing to move to a city where the demand is there (most semi-major cities count), you can expect "I know my shit, look what I made" to get you much, much further than it would anywhere else. The big names (google, etc) are harder to get into but the small guys usually cannot afford to be overly picky. They don't have a large enough budget to attract tons of attention, their turnover is awful because they can't or won't afford to give developers raises in line with what they'd get by just finding a new job after X years, etc.

This isn't to say that there isn't a particular brand of bullshit that goes with tech interviews. Millions or billions of dollars every year goes into trying to figure out how to identify optimal candidates and it is far from a solved problem, so you'll see a few different brands of equally ineffective gatekeeping at the interview level, and have to waste some time learning completely unrelated skills to get past the interview. Deal with it, it's worth it.

If you can secure a loan, consider looking at bootcamps as well. I would strongly advise that you spend some time with the free online courses before signing up to a boot camp - this will help make sure you're not wasting time and money if it turns out that you actually hate programming. If you think "this beats what I'm doing now, go for it. Many people benefit from the structure of a class. Some will charge you a % of your first year's income in lieu of a straight up loan. In addition, any decent boot camp will have partners looking to snipe the best students straight out of class before they have to compete for them on the open market. The value of that ~10k is as much in the access to these employers as it is the actual course material. A decent boot camp plus some dedication on your side can put you in a 50k+ job in as little as 3 months (full time) or 6 months (part time). It's still possible to get work without a bootcamp... I just feel that it is a fairly reasonable risk to take to get you into dev work faster. It's sure the hell cheaper than many 4 year degrees, and significantly faster.

I know this all sounds a bit far-fetched. I made an account just to post it because I cannot emphasize enough how much it isn't out of reach. One of my wife's high school friends who has been perpetually down most of her life (C-student, never got past $9/hour, habitual poor decision-maker) just started full-time at 50k/year after attending a 6 month part-time boot camp. This is in a rust-belt city - 50k goes a long way. She got hired directly by one of the boot camp's partners. It's not the most glamorous dev work - bug fixing for a financial services group - but it sure the hell beats what she was doing before, and she's getting paid a lot more to do it. Further, job hopping is seen as completely acceptable in the industry (they have no choice but to accept it) and you tend to get big raises for doing it. If you manage to get into one of the big companies - Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc - your salary will instantly go over 100k and you'll never have to look hard for work again if you don't want to (they will come looking for you).

The oldest guy in the boot camp was in his 50's. There is absolutely a lot of truth to Silicon Valley being blatantly prejudiced against older employees and people with families... the rest of the country can't afford to be so picky. If you even sort of think you might be happier, give the online courses an honest try. Stick with it when it frustrates the shit out of you (this will happen a lot at first). Maybe look for an online community for new programmers - some of my peers can be flaming douchecanoes but generally programmers are thrilled that someone is interested in the arcane shit they do all day. And - good luck!

TL;DR - if you can program and don't like your current job, just do it. Perpetual work shortages force a significantly more employee-friendly environment.

[PC2]

I don't buy that. When "for profit" colleges are a thing, I refuse to buy that colleges do not make money from students. If it was not a good deal we would not have so many U of Phoenix type schools pop up.

Yes they are a thing, but I'm pretty sure they are a minority.

[Tempguy]

not sure how it works at this level, but lets assume you spend 135,000 on school, then you go on and get a "good" 240,000 job

surely in less than 3 years you can pay that off....the remaining time all you do is make money



how is that a bad investment???? the ROI sounds great if you can live with 240,000/year....


the problem afterwards is debt... dont people go on to buy car, house, have kids, and all this unneeded and pointless stuff????? thats why college seems expensive....cant pay it off fast enough

If everyone graduating college made 250k a year, this would not even be an issue and we would be a nation where most people lived in the upper income bracket.

You may as well have calculated the income after graduation as 1 million for as much as that point was worth.

[Very Tired]

I've noticed colleges like to play the victim when it comes to textbooks, saying they have no control over the costs... Except when you notice the price difference between what they buy used books for and resell them at.

[Tempguy]

Oh, and about programming. I love your post so treat this as a nitpick guy.

Schools suck at teaching. In America at least. Credential inflation along with schools intentionally making shit convoluted is an issue. I am sure I can learn programming, but fucking hell do they make it hard in college.

For instance. I went my whole life thinking I was bad in math. The second I got to algebra my live for math went to shit. In comes college. I am failing hard. Even now I am short a degree cause of basic fucking algebra. I'm an idiot right?

Wrong.

In remedial math I had a hard time until I said fuck all to what the teachers were saying, got myself a math for dummies book, and visited khan academy. I now love math. It all makes sense and I make a game of trying out new ways just to experiment and figure out why a formula is supposedly best. I even taught my older sis on my little chalk board and she thinks I'm some kinda need now.

So yeah, going and taking courses at your leisure and getting certified is spot on. But I just urge anyone to think twice before taking that course in college.

At the end of the day, the best way to go about college is to get a job first. Work you way up and possibly get a certification or several. Then, when it comes time for you to make it to middle management and your competition has degrees, get totaled one that is applicable to your field, or some bullshit degree you can ass blast in 2-3 years.

College is a fucking joke (unless you are doing a career specific program)

[Captain N]

So you're saying if you assume unrealistic future income, it's not a big deal. 1 in 50 HOUSEHOLDS (meaning husband and wife combined) makes more than 250k a year. So no, you don't go and get a 240k job out of college. More like a 50k job.

Most aren't going to even reach the 150k mark let alone the 250k mark in their lifetimes even as a household income. Also many of our posters here with their degrees are making well below that $50,000/year ($24/hour) so chances are they are hurting more using your numbers than previously expected.

[Kapadons]

Go to a trade school. Learn how to weld, or operate a crane, or HVAC or electrician. There you have it. Cheaper schools with a degree in a field that is actually hiring. It just bugs me that people go to a university and graduate with a liberal arts degree then gets pissed they can't find a job. Or a degree in business or finance because millions of other people have one just like them and the barrier to a good job just jumped up past "degree"

OT - as someone said. Supply and demand. We all grew up in the "go to college to get a good job" generation. And now with loans/grants/scholarships there really isn't much of barrier of entry for anyone to actually attend a college.

personally, I would have written a paper on how to fix it, not why it exists.

[Mifuyne]

Because it's easy to keep control if people aren't educated.

[Spectral]

Oh, and about programming. I love your post so treat this as a nitpick guy.

Schools suck at teaching. In America at least. Credential inflation along with schools intentionally making shit convoluted is an issue. I am sure I can learn programming, but fucking hell do they make it hard in college.

For instance. I went my whole life thinking I was bad in math. The second I got to algebra my live for math went to shit. In comes college. I am failing hard. Even now I am short a degree cause of basic fucking algebra. I'm an idiot right?

Wrong.

In remedial math I had a hard time until I said fuck all to what the teachers were saying, got myself a math for dummies book, and visited khan academy. I now love math. It all makes sense and I make a game of trying out new ways just to experiment and figure out why a formula is supposedly best. I even taught my older sis on my little chalk board and she thinks I'm some kinda need now.

So yeah, going and taking courses at your leisure and getting certified is spot on. But I just urge anyone to think twice before taking that course in college.

At the end of the day, the best way to go about college is to get a job first. Work you way up and possibly get a certification or several. Then, when it comes time for you to make it to middle management and your competition has degrees, get totaled one that is applicable to your field, or some bullshit degree you can ass blast in 2-3 years.

College is a fucking joke (unless you are doing a career specific program)

None of this makes it seem like you're secretly good at math. If you have to put in special effort and dig in for workarounds, it kicks ass that you put in the effort, but it still strongly implies that you're just not particularly talented when it comes to math. People that are talented at math don't need remedial work and additional academies, they intuitively understand it when they see it.

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Because it's easy to keep control if people aren't educated.

I'd wager that it's even easier when everyone receives a specific sort of homogenous, milquetoast education.

[Tempguy]

None of this makes it seem like you're secretly good at math. If you have to put in special effort and dig in for workarounds, it kicks ass that you put in the effort, but it still strongly implies that you're just not particularly talented when it comes to math. People that are talented at math don't need remedial work and additional academies, they intuitively understand it when they see it.

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I'd wager that it's even easier when everyone receives a specific sort of homogenous, milquetoast education.

I never said I was a natural born math wizard. I said that my teacher sucked balls and made it overly difficult and it was easy for me to learn once I taught myself and sought out non conventional means.

My point was that most "teachers" may be good at doing what they taxi, but they suck at teaching others to do it. Best to learn it another way and save your money vs going to college and expecting a professor to change the way they have been teaching for a decade to suit your learning needs.



Also.

I disagree. There is no such thing as just "naturally being good at math". That mentality is the reason the United States is failing in math and it is socially accepted. If we treated other subjects like that then we would have an illiterate nation as well as one ignorant in basic science and math.

[Mifuyne]

I'd wager that it's even easier when everyone receives a specific sort of homogenous, milquetoast education.

Absolutely true.
Propoganda education is quite dangerous (North Korea hi).

[Tempguy]

Still disagree. And implying I did not apply myself is disengenous.

I got a tutor. Spent 2 hours 3 days a week on the works. Even she commented that the way we teach math in this country is archaic.

I spent hours on the assignments and struggled to even understand the way the textbook wanter me to do it. When I would ask the teacher, they just spouted a formula and told me to just apply it.

One teacher said what you said. That if I didn't understand it by now then i would not

AFTER I learned from actually good teachers, as well as seek out alternative texts, I was in class and my professor put an sample on the board. The class was quiet. I asked him why he made it so Complicated. I went up to the board and did the problem in 3 steps as apposed to his 8. The class all sighed and told me that they were lost until I showed them a better way.

Sure, some folks simply got it since they naturally just get math. But that in no way means that someone is unable to learn.

When the majority of your students don't understand you don't say "oh they just don't get it," no. You figure out what you are doing wrong and fix yourself.

There is no reason the majority of an entire country should be so shit at math. No excuse. I went from not understanding X -7 = 5 to loving parabolas and shit. So no, you are 100% wrong. Math isn't something you are just born being good at. No subject is. I was a shit writer in grade school and now I am an author. If we treated composition like that then half of us wouldn't even be here since we were not born gifted in understanding letters.

[Wildtree]

So im writing a paper on why college is so expensive in the U.S. The research I've done so far points to a few major concepts

Timeline is important too. It wasn't like that in the past. It became big business.

This is starts to become a little dated, since it's 3 years old.
But it still holds some key information about the evolution of the matter:



and this is a more extensive interview (40 min) with him on the matter

[Ave07]

I've noticed colleges like to play the victim when it comes to textbooks, saying they have no control over the costs... Except when you notice the price difference between what they buy used books for and resell them at.

My school and im sure many others have special books designed for their school. A friend of mines who went to Texas A&M paid $300 for this Accounting textbook as it was designed for his school and they publish a new version each year so they could get students to buy the newest edition each year.

Many courses require you to purchase you to buy a subscription for their online services so even if you do buy a used book you need to still buy a subscription which is usually included with a new book.

[Tumble]

If everyone graduating college made 250k a year, this would not even be an issue and we would be a nation where most people lived in the upper income bracket.

You may as well have calculated the income after graduation as 1 million for as much as that point was worth.

I'm sorry, but I just can't agree with you. If you go to say Harvard Law, that's about 90k a year, but first year corporate lawyers are making 160k straight up once they find a job. If I was teaching kids and I knew that what they learned from me would earn them huge sums of money, I'd charge the shit out of them as well. If you are silly enough to put yourself into massive debt in college and pick a degree in Liberal Arts (HAHAHA) then you have everything coming when you are penniless and living with your parents at 30. There are a lot of programs out there for under privileged kids to go to school, certain circumstances can prevent you from going to college, financial isn't one of them usually. This is literally the first thing that popped up when I typed in too poor to go to college.

[xindralol]

most schools are for profit organizations

[Bosen]

I think it's a pay-gate to better status. They exploit you for awhile and when you finally make it through you can make more money...so you can pay your debt to the gate.

You're going to pay your way into the next level of anything. Vocational training has a $2000.00 price of entry to begin at anything. It's all gated.

They want you in debt so that you're invested in whatever you're doing. You worked hard to get to that level.

[Forogil]

So im writing a paper on why college is so expensive in the U.S. The research I've done so far points to a few major concepts

Baumol's cost disease - While productivity has been rising steadily in most sectors of the economy, teaching has not seen similar improvements. One professor can only teach a class of so many, and higher level classes are expected to limit attendance in order to ensure student access to the faculty. Rising wages without associated productivity gains raises cost disproportionately.

That is certainly part of the problem.

Perverse incentives - US schools all crave high ranking from the US News and World Report publication's annual listing of colleges. One of the primary metrics used is money spent per student. This actually incentivizes schools to spend as much as they can on as few students as possible to increase their ranking. The exact opposite of what we should want to see. be ably performed by people without a degree. This raises demand for college unnecessarily, which results in additional price increases.

It's not only those rankings - there is this general behavioural idea that the high cost shows that it is worth more; similarly as a luxury dress/car - or in evolution a Peacock's tail.

However, you are missing one part: your salary is set in relation to others - the more that enter a field the less unique you become, and the less you can charge in salary. Thus your fellow students are in part competitors.