Explaining the High Cost of College

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | November 5, 2021 | George Leef

[GOPJ]

Once government decided to ‘help’ with a college education three things happened.

1. The quality of Professors went down - waaaaay down.

2. Costs went sky-high.

3. Colleges and Government Bureaucrats became a self-serving tag team.

[nascarnation]

The “big education” cycle.

Make lots of money available for college.
Colleges raise prices to soak it up.
Colleges pay big money to lefty profs and admins.
Profs and admins donate to Democrats.

and repeat

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Sorry, my “Affordable” was tongue-in-cheek, satire. Whenever the government gets involved, things get thoroughly fouled up. The worst is when the government says they are going to make something “affordable.” The price to the consumer ALWAYS soars after they do that. No exceptions.

As you say, nearly “free” money to pay for college means lots of people who should be nowhere near a college (no aptitude, poor grades, no ambition, no desire) went to college and got useless degrees that didn’t require much work. The government claiming that “everybody needs a college degree” made it even worse.

When there was no federal money in colleges, campuses were austere and rather spartan. The people who went to college found a way to pay for it and they got degrees in subjects that paid off.

[FormerFRLurker]

What incentive do colleges have to control costs when the government will pick up the tab of their price increases? In a free market system I’d wager few would be willing to pay $40-50,000 for a college degree, especially one in gender studies or other malarkey.

[TTFX]

Great postm

[Betty Jane]

There are plenty of seats in colleges. The problem is so many people only want name brand colleges. The ‘elite’ colleges are approaching $80,000 and some people believe if you don’t go to one of those, you’ll be a failure. Which is not true. There are many schools that cost under $20,000. If applying strategically, out of pocket cost can be less than that with merit aid.

In the next few years there will be fewer kids graduating HS due to the Birth dearth starting in 2008. The name brand colleges won’t be affected, but the closing of small rural liberal arts colleges will increase. 5-10 already close down every year. The loss of white males going to college is already a problem. As a college becomes more than 60% female, fewer boys will apply there.

[Svartalfiar]

A student working full-time over the summer of 1971 would only need to earn $2.70 per hour, at a time when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, to earn enough to pay for a year at a public, four-year college. Today, that student would need to earn $38.63 an hour.

What four-year college are they looking at? UTA is a bit over $6000 per semester. Assuming three months of your summer job, and no part-time during school, you get $2M per month, $500 per week, or $12.50 an hour. Double it to account for the spring semester, and you need to make ~$25/hr to pay for school. Not sure where the $38/hr comes in, unless they're adding in rent and food to that? Or just going to a really expensive public college?

Yea, college costs are crazy inflated, but their numbers still seem a little high. Get FedGov out of education funding, and I bet college costs would drop 50%+ within a year.