Government subsidies.
Anything the government pays for always costs more than it should.
Bingo! There is no incentive for colleges to reduce costs.
It goes deeper than that. On one level the explosion in cost is also from an explosion in hucksterism, people used the idea of education and credentials to advance ways of separating people from their money and they were very efficient at it. It meant the ability to have a steady income without producing anything or having results expected from you. The multiplication of unmarketable “disciplines” or ones that are only truly marketable if you got in early enough or have the right connections / pedigree that got in early enough, a sort intellectual pyramid scheme, led the charge.
There are disciplines where having credentials makes the most sense and these are those where the soundness of professional judgment may be objectively assessed just from the facts known to have been available by others. This includes fields of engineering, medicine, accounting and others. Likewise if a certain orthodoxy if desired because of a profound accountability and stewardship, say in the instance of theology when done correctly, there is a different sort of justification for credentials.
But for many of these problematic disciplines, from what economics and law have become (liberal theology too) to especially all these Leftist squishy sciencey feel good studies the simple fact is that there is no ability to analyze the soundness of their proposals and ideas until long after the damage has already been done and those who first caused the harm are long gone. Such really have a poor claim for the authority of their credentials.
Yet once in motion in education they don’t stop, and indeed they cannot stop. It isn’t that it’s always knowingly some scam but that unsoundness breeds more unsoundness as students seek to excel and accomplish more than their mentors. In the end it really can, and has in come cases, reach an extreme point where papers are being written, positions being taken, and degrees being conferred, where no one will ever cite, no one will ever read again, and except for a nattering among those who must all stand up for their “educations” or everyone will be out of a job all of it will never again matter. A virtual black hole for money.
Right on the money Lurkinanloomin.
They get their money no matter what. There are no incentives to control the cost of higher education, nobody loses their job because the guaranteed money keeps coming in.
“Government subsidies.
Anything the government pays for always costs more than it should.”
FYI, it is a literal conspiracy - Princeton University “cracked the code” by figuring out how to get these ever-increasing streams of cash flow...but they understood well that they could not do it alone. EVERY college and university had to be on board, so they sent out letters to hundreds of the biggest and most prestigious colleges to get them on board (which didn’t exactly take much convincing - a large part of those streams of cash went directly into the pockets of the administrators). Too bad that most of the people involved back then (circa 1973) are now dead, because they belong in prison for fleecing the American public of literally trillions of dollars (and growing) over the last 45 or so years.
Two words
On line
Two more
Audit classes
Public universities are just that
Anyone can sit in on and class anytime
if they really wanted to “fix” things...
1. Loan amounts and rates offered should be reflective of the realistic earning power of the degree. And/or viability of finding a job in that field.
2. Degrees with little to no earning power or should not cost the same as a viable major or a field of study that talent is needed.
EG: A 4 year (fill in the aggrieved party)-studies degree should NOT cost the same as a 4 year Engineering degree.