dagblog - Comments for "Why College Costs So Much, Part 2"

This is stretching the

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:14:42 +0000

In reply to Why College Costs So Much, Part 2

This is stretching the subject a bit to include what the students get for their dollars.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/23/the-myth-of-the-knowledge-economy/

Colleges are very expensive

LeonardVice — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:49:00 +0000

In reply to Why College Costs So Much, Part 2

Colleges are very expensive because of too many advancements and other miscellaneous fees and tuition fees that they say for the improvement of education system. Most of the time, certain schools turns out to be more business oriented that learning and education oriented.

It;s a good thought, Destor.

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:46:32 +0000

In reply to Hey Doc, How much do you

It;s a good thought, Destor. But there's a downside that might reduce access to college. Student lenders would naturally begin to focus on student borrowers' ability to repay, which in practice would mean their parents' ability to cosign ... family income, collateral, and stuff like that. So many of the students who can now just squeeze into college would probably be shut out.

As it is, a lot of private-school and out-of-state tuition is being paid through loans that parents take out, rather than by student loans. And there's no way to keep middle-class and upper-middle class families from taking out those loans.

Another outcome we may see

NCD — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:58:28 +0000

In reply to Why College Costs So Much, Part 2

Another outcome we may see with an economy stuck in first gear, savings at banks making 0.5% with 3% or more inflation, rising education and health care costs, stagnant 401K's, less federal aid for education and more workers with no retirement plan at all, is parents choosing to have less children, often either one or none.

Hey Doc, How much do you

Michael Maiello — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:48:37 +0000

In reply to Why College Costs So Much, Part 2

Hey Doc,

How much do you think the loan system has to do with this? Seems to me that all loans are, to some extent, inflationary. If you say, "Hey Destor, I'm going to give you a low interest loan to buy a car," then I might well buy a more expensive car than I would if I had to finance it all up front.

Of course, you have good reasons for not making the offer to me because if I go under you've got nothing but a claim on a car that I will sure as heck destroy before I hand it over to your nasty repo-men.

The student lenders though... they have an advantage since student loans can't be discharged by a bankruptcy court and because, like a mortgage lender who sells their loan to Fannie and Freddie, they can reduce a lot of their own risk by offloading their loans to Sallie Mae.

The combination of being able to hound the borrower for life (and to garnish wages) as well as the ability to offload risk, seems to give the lenders some incentives to over-lend, doesn't it? And if all loans are somewhat inflationary, loans that are juiced by government backstops and non-dischargeability are probably really inflationary.

Seems possible that you could reduce tuition inflation by forcing lenders to take more risks. Yes, they will lend yes, but prices will have to come down, somewhat in response.

Exactly correct, there is

tmccarthy0 — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:40:45 +0000

In reply to Why College Costs So Much, Part 2

Exactly correct, there is nothing that I disagree with here at all. And because the citizens of the 50 states, who have opted to slash their own taxes at the expense of their own children.

They failed to adequately subsidize college education for their own children. In that failure they've chosen to partially privatize public university systems. The out of state student at the UW this year runs around $40,000 a year to the $13,000 they charge in state students. More and more they recruit overseas for students who can pay their tuition outright.

It is a vicious cycle obscuring the mission to educate to create a better society, instead it is a fight for dollars, the most apparent victim, as always, the economically disadvantaged. I couldn't work in admission anymore for all the money on the face of the earth, it was just that depressing.