The different reasons why the cost of college has skyrocketed over the years

Outside The Beltway
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As most (likely all) of us know the cost of college has significantly outpaced the costs of everything else, and that even includes the costs of healthcare:

Although there are varying reasons for this the fact is that much of the costs of college have nothing to do with education:

Along with increased recruitment efforts to compete for students comes a battle for the best college experience—think rock-climbing walls, winning sports teams, and decadent cafeterias. Colleges and universities are spending more money on capital improvement to increase rankings and attract better students. And while these improvements may indeed help lure students to attend, they don’t necessarily contribute to their academic success.

In 2011, colleges and universities collectively spent more than $11 billion on new facilities while simultaneously amassing $205 billion in debt, according to figures reported by The Hechinger Report, a higher-education publication.

Athletic spending is also at an all-time high, particularly at public institutions. Unfortunately, this spending has not demonstrated results in graduation rates. In actuality, the majority of students at four-year universities don’t graduate on time: 59% of students take six years to complete their degree, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

https://www.earnest.com/blog/why-is-college-so-expensive/

Regarding the cost of athletics here is another article about that:

Over the years my views on higher education has changed significantly (much of it coming from personal experience as having been a part of the system). How do these facts make everyone else feel? Is the purpose of higher education to fund sports teams and coaches? Is it to pay for a bloated administrative staff and rock climbing wall? Does every other country do this as well?

Looking forward to others views on this and what if anything can and should be done about it.

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I have been associated with a major west coast public University (similar to, but not, Berkeley) since '64. My father was a professor, I am a graduate and I am currently approaching retirement as a staff member (I drive one of those white vans around campus), all at the same University.

The biggest difference that I see is the change in “What is the purpose of a university”

Anecdotally, through my father, in the '50s, the purpose of a university was to educate people in somewhat esoteric disciplines. The value to society was that the presence of smart folks, who are curious and who can apply critical reasoning, helps society. A high school graduate could have a successful life by either going into a trade, going directly into business (mail clerk leading to CEO was a career path) or by going to university if one had that bent of mind. This starting point is as reported by my father, who might have idealized things a bit. The elite of society were often graduates, but not necessarily. (Fun fact, Caldwell Johnson, one of the lead designers of the Mercury and Apollo spacecraft, never went to college.)

When I was a student, this attitude was changing. Most students planned on graduating and working in business. The idea that you could succeed without going to college was on the decline. Companies promoting workers to middle management to upper management from within was on the decline.

Currently, college is seen as the only path to success. It is almost explicitly a pay-wall to the middle class.

As “what are universities for” has changed, so has “how do you compare different universities”

Formerly a university was judged as a whole by the research it (its graduate programs) produced. (and its undergrad program by how many graduates got into grad schools).

Now, the key metric is the annual rankings by the magazine U.S. News and World Report.
And that metric is being replaced by the average starting salaries of a school’s graduates.

When my university’s previous chancellor arrived, she sent out a welcoming statement saying that her purpose was to increase the prestige of this campus. Not a word about education or research, just prestige. (She also sent a memo to all the faculty saying that the previous open door policy had been changed and that she would not meet with individual faculty members, but communicate only through the deans of the colleges.)

When the current chancellor arrived, he declared that he was there to “increase diversity”. And has installed a whole Diversity Division. (Giving them a whole floor his office building, taking that from the Office of the Registrar, which moved into a smaller space, across campus.)

These chancellors are not evil interlopers going off on a whim. Their goals reflect what the regents want, which reflects what society expects. (We are a public university).

Society is replacing judgement with procedure. Companies don’t promote people who have done a good job, they hire the candidate with the best credentials. (Similarly, “zero tolerance” policies at High Schools have replaced discipline from a wise Vice Principal with discipline set by district policies (that come from the state’s Board of Education).)
A diploma with the right school name on it is more valuable than an applicant’s experience.

I also think about the Peter Principle and the idea of a Certificate of Incompetence. A H.S. diploma has been devalued in meaning. It used to mean a certain amount of competence in skills, now it means you didn’t burn the place down. (Similarly, an 8th grade diploma used to mean something.)

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I don’t understand all this talk about “costs”?

Students are demanding free tuition so I assumed…teachers are gonna work for free…amirite? :sunglasses:

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The reason is the for profit colleges such as Phoenix and DeVry with their outrageous high tuition and exploitation of the student loan system.

The state and private colleges seeing the dollars they were missing out on then jump on the for profit college business model for their share of the money grab.

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Right. “Free” is if the professors and all other employees volunteer their services, if the costs of utilities and taxes are waived, if all the supplies and food services are donated. If not, it’s just cost shifting - and very sorry but I don’t want to pay for anyone else’s college tuition. We saved like mad, put all of our kids through college and one through grad school with no loans and no debt. It wasn’t easy, and even though they graduated not that long ago, I’m not sure I could do it today. But it’s time to start asking why tuition has skyrocketed, not to simply accept it and stick the taxpayer for the bill.

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You should be very proud of this great gift you passed on to your children. My compliments.

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Your post has many good points and much to chew on (so to speak). When I read this part of your post I just wanted to quickly respond by also noting that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, (among others) were all college dropouts. Sitting in classrooms can be a means of learning more about certain subjects but that doesn’t make a person an automatic success. College doesn’t make you who you are or want to become. Many people have a false expectation and sense of what college actually is.

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Most Educators, especially those in the most expensive Universities, are not entrepreneurs, nor do they teach entrepreneurship.

Their academic world is insular and cliquish and based in following their leftist politics, or else. “Business,” to them becomes, theoretical and woe to those students daring to step outside the academic bubble into the real world.

Huge salaries and pensions, of course makes costs soar.

Like doctors abandoning ethics and forget their Oath, professorships, forgot that student came first.

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(emphasis added)

That’s kinda contrary to my main point. Colleges reflect society’s view of what they are. The question “what is college for and who should attend”, society has a view of the answer and that view is reflected in how colleges do their thing. What “many people expect” becomes what colleges see as their job.

  • Companies externalizing the costs of training new hire middle management.
  • Under-represented communities (“minorities” isn’t the right word, since women aren’t a minority) under-represented communities seeking an objective validation of their competence. (A Bachelor of Science in Math invalidates the (old) perception that “women can’t do STEM”)
  • College administration seeking to advance their own careers. At my university, doing something new is valued above continuing to do a good thing. In annual evaluations (all levels) “they did same thing as they did last year and they did it well” isn’t a good evaluation. “They innovated X, Y, Z” is a good thing to have on your evaluation, even when there hasn’t been time to see if X, Y or Z does anything positive. (I’m not saying that these are bad people, just people reacting to what is or isn’t rewarded.) An institutional equivalent to what we see in advertising, “the new models are better (even though difference from the old model isn’t in functionality”.

I guess my main point is that there isn’t a villain who caused all of this. And there isn’t a one line fix.

But I do note that the administrator/faculty ratio has gone through the roof. And I also note that this is not unique to education. The ratio of administrators (financing/compliance possibly done by third parties) to those who hands on do the work has increased in all areas. (It is this saving in administrative overhead that is one of the arguments in favor of Single Payer health care.)

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Quite a few studies out there show a direct correlation between increasing student loan supplies and the rise in college costs. In essence, many conclude that the cost of college education has expanded to match the available supply of funding.

(Note: While that correlation is easy to show, I think there is an unanswered chicken-or-egg question. Someone else could show that loan funding has increased as a result of growing college costs.)

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It’s ridiculous that College costs so much. At this rate it’s going to be place only for the “haves” and not a place for the “have nots”. As much as I appreciate my college experience, undergrad and grad, I really wish I could have bypass college. I knew how to write software way before college. Unfortunately, in my profession someone that look like me need a degree and sometimes a master degree just to get a call back for an interview. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have started my own business.

College and these crazy prices isn’t for everyone.

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Here is an article on that:

From the article:

Higher education’s critics tend to blame high prices on overpaid professors or fancy climbing walls. At public colleges, lobbyists tend to blame reductions in state support. But a new study places the blame elsewhere: the ready availability of federal student aid.

Student aid accounts for most of the tuition increases between 1987 and 2010, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The more money students can borrow, the idea goes, the more colleges can charge.

Over the last few decades, the amount of aid available to students has increased dramatically: subsidized loans were expanded, while an unsubsidized loan program made its debut. But looking at the big picture, does that money always offset the costs to students?

The researchers say no. Instead, colleges increase tuition even more, because they know financial aid can cover the difference. Student aid may cover more of students’ tuition – but if the aid wasn’t available, tuition might not have gone up in the first place.*

Part of the problem though is that we as a society have been willing to pay it. So many of us have been brainwashed the marketing forces that profit from Higher Ed. Going to college and/or having your child go to college has been so ingrained in our minds as being such an integral part of the so-called American Dream. Everyone wants they or their children to have that “white-collar” job with a fancy title and college became one of the only means to attain that privileged status. Nobody wants their child to be a mechanic or plumber. There was never any real consideration whether or not those additional 4 years of sitting in classrooms was necessary or much more beneficial or efficacious than the other 13 years a person spent sitting in classrooms. The mindset simply became “everyone needs a college degree”. Do certain careers require a 4 year college degree? Some do but most do not. Various studies indicate that over 50% of college grads end up working in a career that had little or nothing at all to do with their degree.

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I think the value of many college degrees is simply an indication that the holder is educable. The person can follow the rigors and complete the requirements for the degree.

I’m one of those 50%. In fact, I switched majors half way through. In my senior year I took some computer programming courses and discovered that’s what I really wanted to do. So my actual degree never came into play in my career choice. My first job out of college was programming on the PATRIOT missile system back in 1980. They were taking anyone with programming proficiency. The only difference among hirees on the project was that people with computer majors, or engineering or math or physics, got a higher starting salary. They knew that any college major showed certain capabilities, and after that, as long as you could code and test as required, there was a good chance that you could contribute. In fact, a BA often indicated a broader rounding of education than a BS.

Of course, in the 40 years since then, the suite of majors someone might graduate with has expanded into some absurd areas. Maybe today it’s not so certain that a college major in general carries the value it used to carry in the past.

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There are other methods of establishing that with out having many of our younger generation sit through another four years of classes racking up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. There is no logical or efficacious reason that high school needs to be four years for everyone and the same for college. It is an arcane and antiquated system that should be reformed.

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Without a doubt.

The guy who comes up with a widely-accepted method will be a hero. It will change society. (And it will probably take a change in society to implement it.)

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My hope at the college level is many of the struggling colleges start implementing career directed degree programs that only take two years and have relationships with businesses where part of the program requires internships at those businesses where the students get actual real world experience. If this were to happen and businesses were to hire these people over those with the typical four year then more and more students would go to these programs as opposed to a four year degree program. As it is now colleges have no desire to change things as they make tremendous amounts of money by stuffing 200-300 students in lecture halls to take many useless liberal arts classes.

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That’s what Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell (all college dropouts) and others did. Personally with my son I’m going to do everything I can to encourage him to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

Regarding college only being for the “haves” I will disagree there though. Colleges want as many customers as possible and the fact is that even during these decades of skyrocketing costs enrollments were going up because people were willing to pay for it. It is only now things are starting to level off. The fact is as pointed out in the articles I posted in the OP there are so many other factors not related to education that drive up the costs, sports being one of them. If there were streamlined career directed colleges with out all the other ■■■■■■■■ their costs could be significantly less than what colleges currently charge.

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The American people share in the blame as well regarding the skyrocketing costs of college as they have been willing to pay and/or borrow to feed the current system.

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Here is an additional study on the rising costs of education:

While the higher-ed status quo is failing the students, it’s enriching itself immensely. Assistant deans of student loans and thousands of other administrators who we managed to do without a generation ago are raking in huge salaries and fat benefits/pensions.

“Meanwhile, over in the financial racket that’s enabled functionaries to skim $200,000 a year for doing essentially nothing remotely related to students actually learning anything remotely applicable in the real-world economy, student loan lenders are skimming tens of billions in profits guaranteed by the taxpayers. Yes, tens of billions: $140 billion in pure guaranteed profit has been skimmed off the hapless student debt-serfs herded into the shearing machine known as higher education .”

It’s a great article. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it over and over again, the system is scam.

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Regarding state aid today compared to years ago it’s simple math, in other words one of the reasons college tuition fees have been pushed up is because state funding simply can’t keep up with all the students that have been enrolling. Back in the good old days what did we have, say about 10% of people going to college? Now it’s like 40%, so a state would have to raise taxes by an additional amount just to keep up.