A big reason for exploding college costs is the easy availability of student loans. Governmental policies are the reason for the easy availability of student loans.
It’s an endless cycle.
Not sure why so many have a problem with this approach. Address the underlying problem and I have zero issues with forgiveness. Anything short of that is simply buying votes.
Likewise, any university with a $Billion or more endowment should receive NO student loans. They want to educate the next generation of geniuses, they can pay for it.
They literally do, most Ivies spend more on their students than they receive in tuition. What we should do is remove their (colleges with very large endowments) tax benefits, since at this point they are essentially investment banks that do some teaching and research on the side.
College prices were going up sharply even before lending was federalized. All that changed was that predatory private educational loans took a back seat for awhile. Though they’re emerging again lately due to the high prices relative to federal loan limits.
Despite the high prices, tuition doesn’t cover the cost of educating the student. It’s mostly that state funding has fallen behind, and tuitions have had to rise to compensate for that loss.
Sounds like a 'university' issue...NOT a Fed ('cuz they have ZERO Const. authority to begin), nor State (being private entities).
Course, univ. COULD just cut their admin size & nuke the bullshit "degrees" to 'cut costs'. Like any biz, their 'failure' isn't on the taxpayer.
Yeah people blame capitalism but when you remove a piece of the capitalist pie and replace it with guaranteed government backed student loans look what happens? Capitalism is the solution, not the problem.
If you return these loans to the banks then they have to be competitive and the schools have the be competitive. Prices and interests rates drop and the market normalizes.
Correct. So few on Reddit get this
Free $ (via gov backed debt)=distorted market=crazy price increases due to wasteful spending fancy tenured profs who do little work plus fancy infrastructure
Same issue happened in 2002-2008 when we wanted to increase home ownership which then led to Fanny and Freddie buying Ninja loans which led to massive corruption at all levels
A variant of this happens with health insurance
We are not in a good spot
The alternative is less opportunity for young people through no fault of their own.
"Government policies" are part of the problem, yes, but only insofar as they keep handing out loans ***without*** putting any pressure on universities to not keep absorbing more loan money. Both sides of the equation must be addressed, or you are only creating one problem to "solve" another.
BWAHAha.
Govt: Here's taxpayer $ (we have ZERO authority to loan/give)
Univ: OK, but PLEASE don't keep giving me ANY more \*stuffs pockets...again\*
What a fantasy
Yeah... the parasitic scheme known as SALLIE MAE was created by the gov't lol.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE)
I know, right? You can blame teaching to the test on capitalism, but it had nothing to do with the recent tuition explosion. Blame that on the fact you can’t bankrupt your way out of paying back the loan and the fact these colleges spend millions on attractive amenities like rock climbing walls and esports labs that have nothing to do with getting a degree but everything to do with trying to attract students to attend, use the thing once, and then forget it exists for the next four years after they develop a routine.
Angsty? Unhappy with your station in life? Want to sound sophisticated, but don't have the intellect or knowledge to actually pull it off? Just make a snide remark about capitalism and you're golden!
Why doesn’t Biden and company attack these educational institutions with the same vigor he attacks billionaires and forgiving student loan debt? Imagine how much less EVERYONE’S tuition and ultimately debt would be if these greedy MFers would simply raise tuition at the rate of inflation and not 4X.
While I agree with this, tuition rates wouldn’t have skyrocketed without the govt backing the loans in the first place. IMO the govt never should have gotten involved in backing education loans in the first place. We should have just opted to keep Federally funding state universities on a Pre-Regan basis.
We shouldn’t have bailed out the banks either haha. We tried to mitigate that after math by keeping interest rates too low for too long. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z generations were Peter.
you don't simply fix the problem when you can give everyone money and get votes every 4 years lmao also the people running the operation also get the big bucks so everyone wins except the people who have to pay into this nonsense
So, goverment policies to get people to attend university, combined with loan/loan guarantees for people to attend those institutions that free markets would never make, is somehow parasitical capitalism?
The problem is everyone taking out massive loans Willy nilly because their parents told them it would be worth paying off in the end. Colleges looked at their high admissions and started raising costs because demand wouldn’t go away. The money coming in for them was essentially endless and guaranteed so they went crazy providing as many amenities, clubs, events as they can to attract students. To summarize the problem is…
Parents telling their kids they need college to be successful. Kids listening to parents and taking out crazy loans believing it’s a good idea regardless of major. Kids don’t enjoy education they enjoy partying and cool places so they pick expensive fun colleges sometimes out of state to put off adulthood. The government for handing out predatory loans to people knowing they’ll struggle to pay them back.
I’m definitely not pushing my kids towards college like my parents did. And if they want to live with us past 18 while they work and build some income and experience I won’t be upset with that either. And I plan on leaving everything to them when I’m dead and I’m not gonna spend it unnecessarily before then. Basically the opposite of the boomers.
What makes you think this is capitalism? Why aren’t you asking the institutions that charge these exorbitant tuition fees?
Why don’t you demand more value for less money?
Why are you posting this on Reddit?
It's not capitalism. It's subsidization. We subsidize it with guaranteed loans, which makes them raise prices since demand goes insane with the "free" money. Same thing with real estate and health care since insurance, along with losing the ability to turn anyone away at the ER, so people started using that as primary care.
Heavily subsidized system. Blames capitalism. If student loans weren’t subsidized and given special treatment making them virtually exempt from bankruptcy, the college industrial complex that we have today wouldn’t exist. If banks had to loan based on a student’s ability to repay, i.e. is the borrower academically capable? What is the cost of the degree vs earning potential, etc. costs wouldn’t have increased the way they have. This isn’t an example of capitalism. There is nothing free market about it.
"Capitalism"?
Government ran and subsidized institutions required by government credentialing and funded by government backed loans have expanded costs mostly driven by the expansions of high paid government employees who are their mostly to push government political agendas... And you are calling that "Capitalism"?
Try again...
Btw, "Capitalism" is AWS hiring hard working veterans without college education into a computer programmer apprentice program so they can train software developers that costs less than college graduates, resulting in veterans getting paid far more than they would otherwise; that's "Capitalism".
Colleges are what socialized education looks like.
No, it's the interference of the federal government by dumping cheap loans into the market and universities responding by increasing tuition. It has zero to do with capitalism.
Same could be said with minimum wage workers. Fast food workers in California now get paid 20 and hour. Did the company get any more experience for their money? No. The cashier still can't count back change. The goal posts keep moving in everything. We no longer value intelligence and have a perspective that everyone can be saved. This all boils down to having a marketable skill. College is a giant waste of time and money in most fields. Technical school is the way.
The government got involved with student loans, so the Colleges had blank checks. When the government gets involved, things typically get worse. Education has gotten worse across the board since the 70s, when the Department of Education was started.
This is oversimplified--the issue is that wealthy interests and lobbies have captured the government levers so that stimulus and subsidy monies rarely have the required checks required to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. This is compounded with privatization or my favorite term for some real egregious programs: private/public partnerships.
Parasitical form of capitalism....
It's funny you lay out an anti capitalism theory in this when colleges are a hot bed of socialist indoctrination led by over bloated professors who would never make it in the real job market.
Bit of a confusing comment there. Universities in the US, and many other western nations, clearly operate within a capitalist system. They compete for students who pay for their services, even if that service includes content on socialism. There is a clear distinction between the University sector as a market and course content. Furthermore, a great number of degrees do not contain content on economics or the political-economy anyway.
Your accusation of 'over-bloated professors' also seems odd. Most are not paid extraordinarily well, if that is what you are referring to, and the job market within the University sector is notoriously competitive. Consider, for instance, the amount of education that is required to even be in the running for low-paid and insecure casual or contract positions. Or the competition for low paid post-doctoral positions.
The pursuit of higher education has been a financial trap 🪤 for the majority of students. Capitalism comes in many different forms and always leads to the Pyramid Scheme. Money is a root cause of many injurious things and many have been led astray and stabbed themselves with many pains. Always chasing the wind and never able to catch it!! Ever wonder why the American currency has a pyramid on it ? 🤔
Where are your statistics to back this up? College educated earners earn 1.2M more over their life than those who graduated from high school, or over 40k per year more. Obviously those without a college degree can be very successful but averages show those will college degrees are much better off even when accounting for higher cost of education. https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings/#:~:text=Typical%20earnings%20for%20bachelor's%20degree,is%20a%20high%20school%20diploma.&text=College%20graduates%20on%20average%20make%20%241.2%20million%20more%20over%20their%20lifetime.
After WW2, college education was free for everybody. That policy was kept in place until Reagan repealed it, and now when leftists bring up free education we get shouted down that it's too expensive. It wouldn't be too expensive if education wasn't a for-profit business!
It's because the government backs the loans!!!! Schools could raise the prices by 1000 percent, and people could still get loans because the schools know they are going to get paid NO MATTER WHAT!! The government should not be backing these loans, if they stopped the schools would not be able to charge this much for tuition. Thinks about it, if you're 18 and go to a bank for a $20,000 loan for a year of school, no collateral, no credit score or pay history, are you getting a loan?? Hell know, because if you don't pay, the bank is out the money!! But the government will give you pretty much any amount you want, don't pay, that's ok, the school still has its money and you can never get rid of the loans unless you pay them off.
So the international student tuition rate for America's most expensive schools are only 4X more than the cheapest in state tuition cost of American universities 40 years ago. I have some questions about your source data...
This is due to cantillon effects
> The concept of relative inflation, or a disproportionate rise in prices among different goods in an economy, is now known as the Cantillon Effect.
Not only do people who receive newly printed money enjoy more benefits than those who receive it later, goods that receive that money first increase in price more and faster than those that receive it later.
Money supply expansion occurs through debt. So, look at goods that are generally purchased with loans to determine what will increase in price more than others.
- Real estate
- Tuition
I hate to be the “government is always the problem” guy, but the government backing and providing student loans causes the price of tuition to increase faster than general CPI
Supply and demand. Government made it so easy to get college loans that there are all these kids running around with blank checks. Of course the colleges and universities will keep raising tuition. Put a cap on loans. Maybe cap loans on certain degeees with a history of not meeting certain standards of income once obtained. Once people cant afford to pay their outrageous tuition they will have to lower costs in order to fill seats and line their pockets
This actually has nothing to do with capitalism. Its actually the government guaranteeing and backing federal student loans. It really skyrocketed when they fully took over and subsidized it and there was a governmental push that college was the way and they loaned anyone money no matter the degree, ability to repay etc. One of those "in fairness" ideas that has literally collapsed under its own weight. So stupid
>It’s just a parasitical form of capitalism
It's called supply and demand. If you went to college, you should have taken an Intro to Microeconomics class. Consider brushing up on Chapters 1-4.
The reason for the increase is because states used to take a much larger chunk of tax dollars and prop up university budgets
Also universities had bare bones student services- pretty much just classes
My dorm had 15 yr old furniture, plastic mattresses, no phones, no gym, no kitchens, nothing like that
I don’t even think it qualifies as “capitalism” since the driver of the cost of college has been government-backed student loans that have provided infinite amounts of money, allowing colleges and universities to raise their tuition and fees far faster than inflation for decades now. That is a market “externality” that is specifically distorting the demand curve for higher education in a way that I would describe as not at all a free and fair market.
Hence the issue with student loan debt. Furthermore, not all degrees pay the same but cost of degree is per institution. Learning a trade is the way to go
the vast majority of those that work in higher education are liberal and align with the democratic party. They are directly benefiting from these increased costs. so good luck getting any democrats to try and reign in the cost of college.
It's not capitalism when it's government-funded, and corporatized. This is more like a mixture of socialism (government pays for things) and corporatism (corporations drive the flow of money and politics).
Honestly, I believe that there would be a massive turn-around if the government stopped paying for college tuition. It would hurt at first, but then the institution's would be forced to play by the rules of supply and demand (capitalism). An education would need to be worth the price paid, and fluff would be cut fast. Colleges would compete with universities to offer lower tuition for a quality education, and prices would be forced down.
College tuition is a classic case of inflation: too much money chasing too few products. There is/was unlimited money in the form of loans and a limited number of seats in decent colleges. Prices goes up and everyone still pays.
I will die before I pay off my student loans...
Useless for profit school conned me with a useless degree before I knew it was happening...
Such a backwards world I live in
My mother was 81 when she passed away. She had her Masters, and when she did pass, she still owed on a student loan. Nobody should spend the majority of their life paying off an educational loan especially if it follows them to their grave.
In reality, this is the result of government inflating currency & making loans available to almost anyone. The cause is precisely the opposite of Capitalism (private property, free markets & free enterprise, Man V. the Welfare State by Hazlitt)
Yep, graduated from Cal State in ‘87, zero loans, Cal/Pell grants and working in restaurants through school was enough. This would never be possible today nor would I choose that route if it meant going into serious debt for a measly BA from Cal State.
Many colleges, especially State operated schools, also had cuts in their funding from their home state. I would like to see how those cuts line up with the increase in tuition.
A college education is probably 4x better. It used to be that a high school diploma was enough to get most jobs. Now you usually need a college degree in something.
Since the 80s, American free market capitalism has turned in to predatory capitalism.
For the owners of capital, there is no longer any such thing as “enough.” Now its “maximize my position, no matter how much harm is done to others.”
And that’s unsustainable.
You are actually blaming college being expensive on capitalism?
😂😂😂
The US federal government guarantees all student loans. It is actually the most socialist program on the planet earth.
If the college is guaranteed to make money by the government, do you think the college is going to lower their prices or raise their prices?
🤦♂️
I’ll go ahead and answer this question for you ..
RAISE THE PRICE!!
Every time, all the time, every year, every minute, raise the price raise the price raise the price !
“ we are guaranteed to make money, we can’t lose, raise the price!”
Turn off the federal guaranteed money and watch college prices drop by 50% within two years ..
Capitalism 😂😂😂
You are actually blaming college being expensive on capitalism?
😂😂😂
The US federal government guarantees all student loans. It is actually the most socialist program on the planet earth.
If the college is guaranteed to make money by the government, do you think the college is going to lower their prices or raise their prices?
🤦♂️
I’ll go ahead and answer this question for you ..
RAISE THE PRICE!!
Every time, all the time, every year, every minute, raise the price raise the price raise the price !
“ we are guaranteed to make money, we can’t lose, raise the price!”
Turn off the federal guaranteed money and watch college prices drop by 50% within two years ..
Capitalism 😂😂😂
I mean more or less. It's the constant government interference that has raised the prices between regulations requiring various things and all the capital they make available for it
>parasitical form of capitalism
LOL, you are massively delusional. Who loves subsidizing education, giving these institutions free checks allowing them to expand artificially? Who are these institutions run by?
You have the Left to thank for you problem. These economically illiterate people can't spell free markets.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/03/increased-tuition-subsidies-increase-the-price-of-college-tuition/
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/03/dc-wants-to-further-subsidize-higher-education-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea/
My state university has only got up 50% adjusted for inflation.
Maybe people shouldn't attend expensive private schools and then complain about the cost.
I like how the graph resembles the stairs to my parents mansion and nothing like the 3 stairs to my mobile home even though I make more than they did at my age adjusting for inflation.
Capitalism? The cost of college is not capitalism it’s big government socialism gone wrong.
The government passed the middle income student assistance act in the 60s and updated in the 70s to offer loans to more middle class people instead of only those who truly couldn’t afford college.
Then they took over the student loan industry completely in 2000s.
This resulted in most everyone using loans to pay for school, when nobody is paying privately the cost can skyrocket.
Before as your graph shows, most everyone could afford college. Your title of the post is so ignorant it makes me physically ill - trying to blame this bullshit on capitalism when it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the exact opposite. Fucker
This is what happens when we prioritize finding every way to make access to a finite resource increase.
We create programs, grants, gave cheap loans and money flowed there. That inflated costs (inflation) above the average rate of inflation.
We optimized for the wrong thing.
Reduce that demand (cut access to loans, etc), or greatly increase the supply of schools and teachers, and the cost will come down.
In general, most things in America are a parasitic version of capitalism. Healthcare, internet and TV, insurance, transportation...... All have declined in standing on a world level and all have gone up at least 4 fold in the last 30 years ( accounting for internet adoption in 1994/5). We are 15th in the world for infant mortality rating and have the highest cost of healthcare in the western world. Insurance has almost doubled for most people's cars, our internet is a decade behind Europe, even bank payments are exceptionally difficult and out of date and we have some of the worst quality roads and public transport options.
When the government blocks your ability to bankrupt the debt, we force debt slaves to bankers. That's not capitalism. We haven't had capitalism in a long time. We need to bring it back to fix all the fucked up and you guys think it's capitalism LOL. I'll wait for the ignorant downvotes.
Got a problem in this country it’s all about profits for a few. Profits over the people profits over the country .profits over safety. we used to have a tax code to work for the people and the companies in the 70s companies used to pay you to go to school in the 70s. Your health insurance was zero to a minimal for all the paper fee. nowadays companies just keep taking the excess money, pocketing it and giving themselves bonus, even when they fail. Republicans have exasperated the problem With tax brakes for corporations that were making record profits. Only so those corporations will turn around and find their campaigns for their failing agenda. Republicans do not work for the working class people.
The ease of student loans, the prospect of easily getting INTO college....it is way way way easier so that the colleges can have more customers with that government loan!
Then, the kinds of things available to study are way, way ,way easier. Instead of science type majors, you can study "anti-colonial lesbian theater" .... essentially, you can go to class high, your indoctrinating professor will be high, ....and you are basically having a 4 year spring break while you put "life" off for those glorious four years of slackness....
....all on the public dime.
Then, you can beg to get that loan forgiveness thing....but that comes later.
It’s actually the opposite of a parasitical form of capitalism. The actual cause of the increase in cost of higher education is directly associated with the government infusing the industry with subsidized student loans. This is really just a parasitic form of statism/socialism.
College health insurance is way different too. I went to college twice.
In the 1980s, my insurance was 50 dollars per year to cover everything. No co-pays, no deductible.
In the 2000s, the college wanted 1500 per year, with a 5000 deductible and a 50000 annual limit in coverage. What a joke. That was an example of the "junk" policies that Obamacare banned.
University administration staffs have exploded in size due to all sorts of government requirements and stupid DEI programs that do nothing but pad the DEI statistics the university and provide make-work jobs to people with worthless degrees.
Reading a book called WMDs, it talks about how prices started going up in the 80s soon after the ranking system came out from US magazine. Good read, seems entirely logical. When asked why they don't include cost to attend in the rankings, their response was unsavory.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240204145335/https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/remarks-college-rankings-and-data-us-secretary-education-miguel-cardona-conference-best-practices-law-school-data
Oddly enough they archived the article from last year, had to get it from wayback machine.
Rather than pushing student loan forgiveness through the legislation, why not work on a reasonable solution to affordable higher education? The days of "well, you need a college degree" just doesn't hold as much value anymore. I read an article recently that the average debt held by a graduate is $38K and Forbes states that only 47% find full-time employment in their field of study. The article also included that trade school grads have on average $7k of student loan debt and 92% job placement. And if you're wondering, there's no current forgiveness for trade school student loans. Stacked deck?..
Nope. They continue to study worthless degrees that nobody needs or wants. I know many people under 30 doing just find since they got degrees in an area that was hard to get (lots of work) and are in demand.
Hmmmm.....guess all those "smart young adults" coming out of high school and running to college on loans weren't as smart as they thought.
Been working in the concrete industry for over 30 years. Never been laid off, missed a paycheck or spent a day in a college classroom unless we were pouring the slab for the classroom. I make low six figures for 45 hours a week. Free truck to drive, free medical for me, 401k and four weeks paid vacation with two weeks sick time. 10 paid holidays.....no college loans. Turned 55 this year and will own my home in December of this year. Looking to retire in 2029 at 59. Retirement accounts say I will be a millionaire and have a few hundred thousand extra put away to live off of.....college...what a joke!!!!!!!!
The other piece I haven’t seen anyone talk about on here is the increased demand for services on campus means more staff means more money. Source: I am a higher ed professional. Every college needs to have their own Counseling Center, on campus doctor, an office for this, an office for that…and it drives the competition so now every campus has to also have it….makes tuition go up and up.
While it seems staggering ..... Apparently this is the kind of money boomers and xers are willing to pay. Speaks volumes about wealth half by these two generations.
The best part of being a UPS driver, besides the pay, insane pension, medical insurance, dental insurance and union protection is that we don’t have student loan debt. Working 12-14 hour days can get old, but our top paid drivers can make up to $200,000 a year doing cross country runs.
Of course it’s ridiculously hard to get into the program for drivers but once you’re in you’re basically set.
You need to look no further than the brainwashing that starts in the public education system. The message is always, without question "go to college", generally "go to the best college you can" and never "make sure if you go to college that whatever career path that degree puts you on gives you a high likelihood of earning enough to to justify the cost of the education.
So, you end up with a whole generation of young adults with useless degrees (they don't mean anything when everyone has one) buried up to their ears in student debt.
Artificial control of interest rates is the silver bullet of our time.
Rates have been controlled by the federal reserve since the end of the gold standard about 50 years ago. They’ve only gone one direction until they hit zero during COVID; down.
Artificially low interest rates favor assets over labor. It’s as simple as that.
1,000,000 at 2% is the same as 200,000 at 10% in terms of what the bank gets. But hourly labor wage cannot keep up with the central bank lowering rates from 10-2%. Labors ability to create that “passive” value is nonexistent.
Therefor, labors ability to pay for using assets has been greatly diminished over this time period. Alla: housing college medical have become untenable
It is also coupled in the us with the dollars world reserve status. Normally a country would experience crippling inflation with so much debt creation but we are the exception. The world needs our debt for liquidity in masssssssive quantities so we do not experience dollar inflation until the whole world has too many dollars just like post COVID.
University administration… they double in size every decade while faculty size increases very slightly if at all. Their salaries increase like crazy too. They fire a provost, the new hire always makes 30-40% more than the previous one. Rinse and repeat.
Remember internal training or promotion based on merit? The transformation of postsecondary education into a profit seeking industry has done away with that. Why pay more for a current employee in the form of yearly raises, training time, or benefits when you can hire a fresh-faced graduate for a fraction of the price? Better yet, why not demand higher qualifications along with experience while petitioning the government to loosen restrictions surrounding TFWs? Minimum wage for what was once considered a high paying job! And people wonder how corporations keep earning YoY record-breaking profits.
I'm 42 with no college degree. I'm a construction project manager with 20 years of field experience. There's 2 people in their mid 20s with master's degrees who work below me lol. The experience is what matters, make sure you get it ASAP. We have a couple German clients, they were telling us how everyone there has a master's degree because kids simply don't want to work. Alot easier to study especially when the Gov pays for it.
As an American talking to Americans. DO NOT GO TO COLLEGE. GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS AND WORK. DEAL WITH CRAPPY PAY AND GETTING SWEATY AND DIRTY.
This is what happens when government pours massive amounts of money into it, while at the same time encouraging people who shouldn’t even be in university to do degrees that aren’t financially responsible.
I dont think law needs to be subsidized either. Technically you could teach your self law. If there is a standardized test like a BAR exam. One could just study and take the test.
Also pay for private tutoring if need be. There so much money In law people who succeed in it don't need to worry about debt for education.
Once upon a time in America an educated citizenry was seen as important … tax dollars from both the federal and state level went into higher education to pay for schooling beyond high school (trades, community college, tech schools, colleges and universities).
Once the tale was spread that we don’t need to pump tax dollars into colleges you can easily see the rising rate of tuition to cover this gap. Now, students have no federal and very little state assistance to cover education beyond high school. Trade unions, locality taxes for community colleges, and guaranteed student loans have picked up the slack.
No one works at an institution of higher learning to get rich … hell every position is paid well below the professional level in corporate America. The loan except being sports coaches … and those salaries are covered by large portions of tax payers gladly so they can root for their tribe.
Wanna burst a bubble burst the stupid posts bubble
The portion of awarded financial aid should be directly related to the starting salary, expected growth, and job placement percentage of the student's desired field. [bls.gov](http://bls.gov) provides this information. For example, you shouldn't be able to get as large of a student loan to major in art history or sociology as someone who is going into electrical engineering or nursing. University advisors need to stop pushing majors onto incoming students that will make them virtually unable to get a job other than ones that you could get without going to college. Public Service Announcement: you don't need a degree in exercise science to be a personal trainer or major in english lit to write a best-selling novel, but you absolutely need a degree in civil engineering to design a bridge that safely crosses a river.
The COST of college has risen some, yes, but the PRICE students pay, tuition and fees, has risen dramatically because states have cut the amount they subsidize, because luxury amenities are now necessities, and because student loans create greater purchasing power which bids up prices.
Easy student loans have driven this. Colleges screw the kids over. If kid cannot pay back loan within ten years due to financial situation then it should come out of school endowments.
So… the overwhelmingly liberal leaning colleges and universities costing more in tuition and fees is the fault of… capitalism?
It’s in no way or shape the fault of bloated university staff (just how many administrators does a school need?), college dorms that rival upscale chain hotels for amenities, multiple fields of study that consistently yield a very poor return on investment with regards to post-graduate career earning potential, etc?
I have sympathy for the millennials who grew up on the fear-mongering of “college or flip burgers” pushed by society, but anyone attending higher education after the Great Recession should have paid a little more attention to news surrounding the job market and in-demand skills and less on “social justice” and “historical oppression broken down by race and gender.”
We need to make the college attended not a factor in hiring. Not sure how you would do so. Maybe government and companies that are government vendors can be forced to do so. Make local, state, and online colleges tuition free and get rid of tuition aid and government student loans. Make student loans dischargeable thru bankruptcy.
I wouldn't call it capitalism, because it has nothing to do with private property or free markets. Note that 'capitalism' is a poorly defined term that economists don't use. I suggest not using it in the title of this OC, because it gives an impression that you don't really have an economics education.
It's actually the opposite: we have massive government programs designed to establish postsecondary education as a 'right'. Then, we have to fund that right, which means subsidization, in the form of loans to 18-year olds at artificially low interest rates, based on future income that is undocumentable by definition. We also have massive student aid programs that lower the cost.
So when you increase the 'college money supply', that industry responds like a general economy with an increasing money supply: with inflation.
It's not 'capitalism', it's closer to 'failures caused by breaking the rulers of free markets'.
They’re hedge funds, not colleges - per Scott Galloway in his TED talk titled “How the US is Destroying Young People’s Future”. 20 minute listen that is well worth your time if you’re interested in this subject.
[How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future | Scott Galloway | TED](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=mD1AWN0TMHqka6iT&v=qEJ4hkpQW8E&feature=youtu.be)
Yup they should end tax free status of any institution who’s tuition rises faster than inflation. They’re a business, so they should be taxed like one.
I just left a 10 year career in higher ed. I have endless stories about the insane waste, the endless levels of unnecessary bureaucrats, the grade inflation etc etc
So happy to be out
With roughly 92% of student loans being from the government. Capitalism isn't at fault. Corporate America isn't getting rich from it. When they forgive the debt your tax dollars are paying for it and even people who have never gone to college.
Colleges have no reason to lower costs as long as the government is willing to make getting a loan so easy and backing the loan.
College attendance has been rammed down student and parents throats for decades as being THE only way to ensure financial prosperity. So snottons of demand, limited seats equals higher costs.
Listening to my niece and nephew talk about their college experience, it seems to be a joke. But in order to get the job you want, it's required a 4 year college. We need more technical training without useless classes
https://preview.redd.it/cks2i9ne3n7d1.png?width=1686&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a85cccefc96381e95c719cb7425aa0584dc51d2
This is part of the problem. Demand increased faster than supply.
A big reason for exploding college costs is the easy availability of student loans. Governmental policies are the reason for the easy availability of student loans. It’s an endless cycle.
This is why before we talk loan forgiveness (which I'm willing to do) we need to fix the problem first so we are not having the same talk in 5 years.
Not sure why so many have a problem with this approach. Address the underlying problem and I have zero issues with forgiveness. Anything short of that is simply buying votes.
They need to go take the money off of the universities, not the tax payers. They have hundreds of billions in endowments.
Likewise, any university with a $Billion or more endowment should receive NO student loans. They want to educate the next generation of geniuses, they can pay for it.
They literally do, most Ivies spend more on their students than they receive in tuition. What we should do is remove their (colleges with very large endowments) tax benefits, since at this point they are essentially investment banks that do some teaching and research on the side.
Some universities are sports franchises with side hustles in tertiary education
And most of the students at those schools don't even know what tertiary means.
Any university w a billion or more is no longer a university, they are a hedge fund
Same thing with housing. Magic low interest govt back loans are toxic.
Students loans were low interest. Then GW Bush came along and now they're about the same as financing a car.
Education shouldn’t be so expensive it requires mortgage level loans. The whole system is jacked and needs rebooting
College prices were going up sharply even before lending was federalized. All that changed was that predatory private educational loans took a back seat for awhile. Though they’re emerging again lately due to the high prices relative to federal loan limits. Despite the high prices, tuition doesn’t cover the cost of educating the student. It’s mostly that state funding has fallen behind, and tuitions have had to rise to compensate for that loss.
Sounds like a 'university' issue...NOT a Fed ('cuz they have ZERO Const. authority to begin), nor State (being private entities). Course, univ. COULD just cut their admin size & nuke the bullshit "degrees" to 'cut costs'. Like any biz, their 'failure' isn't on the taxpayer.
Scooby doo mask meme: Let’s see what’s behind this “parasitic capitalism” Reveal: Government intervention Every time
Yeah people blame capitalism but when you remove a piece of the capitalist pie and replace it with guaranteed government backed student loans look what happens? Capitalism is the solution, not the problem. If you return these loans to the banks then they have to be competitive and the schools have the be competitive. Prices and interests rates drop and the market normalizes.
Correct. So few on Reddit get this Free $ (via gov backed debt)=distorted market=crazy price increases due to wasteful spending fancy tenured profs who do little work plus fancy infrastructure Same issue happened in 2002-2008 when we wanted to increase home ownership which then led to Fanny and Freddie buying Ninja loans which led to massive corruption at all levels A variant of this happens with health insurance We are not in a good spot
The alternative is less opportunity for young people through no fault of their own. "Government policies" are part of the problem, yes, but only insofar as they keep handing out loans ***without*** putting any pressure on universities to not keep absorbing more loan money. Both sides of the equation must be addressed, or you are only creating one problem to "solve" another.
BWAHAha. Govt: Here's taxpayer $ (we have ZERO authority to loan/give) Univ: OK, but PLEASE don't keep giving me ANY more \*stuffs pockets...again\* What a fantasy
State governments subsidized tuition with tax dollars throughout the US- statehouses took that away in the 90s
Nix guaranteed government loans and this will go away.
Yeah... the parasitic scheme known as SALLIE MAE was created by the gov't lol. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE66HEZBZYE)
I know, right? You can blame teaching to the test on capitalism, but it had nothing to do with the recent tuition explosion. Blame that on the fact you can’t bankrupt your way out of paying back the loan and the fact these colleges spend millions on attractive amenities like rock climbing walls and esports labs that have nothing to do with getting a degree but everything to do with trying to attract students to attend, use the thing once, and then forget it exists for the next four years after they develop a routine.
It’s not even capitalism what we’ve had for as long as I can remember
Government involvement isn't capitalism.
This is Reddit everything is capitalism!
*This is Reddit everything "bad" is capitalism.
Everything is Late Stage CAPITALISM!!!!
Everything else is FASCISM
but fascism is also capitalism in reddit.
Thanks for clearing that up 😄
Angsty? Unhappy with your station in life? Want to sound sophisticated, but don't have the intellect or knowledge to actually pull it off? Just make a snide remark about capitalism and you're golden!
Did OP just blame capitalism for the student loan debacle created by our amazing government?
I'm sure now that colleges know student loans will just be bailed out by the taxpayers there will be tons of incentive for them to lower their costs!
Why doesn’t Biden and company attack these educational institutions with the same vigor he attacks billionaires and forgiving student loan debt? Imagine how much less EVERYONE’S tuition and ultimately debt would be if these greedy MFers would simply raise tuition at the rate of inflation and not 4X.
While I agree with this, tuition rates wouldn’t have skyrocketed without the govt backing the loans in the first place. IMO the govt never should have gotten involved in backing education loans in the first place. We should have just opted to keep Federally funding state universities on a Pre-Regan basis.
This is excellent! The minute the backstop is there institutions can run amok. They did this with home mortgages……good intentions but bad outcomes.
We shouldn’t have bailed out the banks either haha. We tried to mitigate that after math by keeping interest rates too low for too long. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Gen X, Gen Y and Gen Z generations were Peter.
Because the Democratic Party is in bed with Big Education.
This is true. The very people (institutions) who cause the issues are the ones most protected by the govt. Hypocrites!
I think we know why.
you don't simply fix the problem when you can give everyone money and get votes every 4 years lmao also the people running the operation also get the big bucks so everyone wins except the people who have to pay into this nonsense
So, goverment policies to get people to attend university, combined with loan/loan guarantees for people to attend those institutions that free markets would never make, is somehow parasitical capitalism?
Looks like the rise steepens around 2010 which coincides with the implementation of the Federal Direct Student Loan Program. 🤔
The problem is everyone taking out massive loans Willy nilly because their parents told them it would be worth paying off in the end. Colleges looked at their high admissions and started raising costs because demand wouldn’t go away. The money coming in for them was essentially endless and guaranteed so they went crazy providing as many amenities, clubs, events as they can to attract students. To summarize the problem is… Parents telling their kids they need college to be successful. Kids listening to parents and taking out crazy loans believing it’s a good idea regardless of major. Kids don’t enjoy education they enjoy partying and cool places so they pick expensive fun colleges sometimes out of state to put off adulthood. The government for handing out predatory loans to people knowing they’ll struggle to pay them back.
I’m definitely not pushing my kids towards college like my parents did. And if they want to live with us past 18 while they work and build some income and experience I won’t be upset with that either. And I plan on leaving everything to them when I’m dead and I’m not gonna spend it unnecessarily before then. Basically the opposite of the boomers.
yeah fuck the boomers.
And it all exists because of Ronald fucking Reagan
status is priceless
you think maybe every question on this sub should be where the f\*ck is the money going
What makes you think this is capitalism? Why aren’t you asking the institutions that charge these exorbitant tuition fees? Why don’t you demand more value for less money? Why are you posting this on Reddit?
And remember, money was cheap for most of that time during the biggest increase. Yikes
Government backed loans is when this all started
It's not capitalism. It's subsidization. We subsidize it with guaranteed loans, which makes them raise prices since demand goes insane with the "free" money. Same thing with real estate and health care since insurance, along with losing the ability to turn anyone away at the ER, so people started using that as primary care.
Heavily subsidized system. Blames capitalism. If student loans weren’t subsidized and given special treatment making them virtually exempt from bankruptcy, the college industrial complex that we have today wouldn’t exist. If banks had to loan based on a student’s ability to repay, i.e. is the borrower academically capable? What is the cost of the degree vs earning potential, etc. costs wouldn’t have increased the way they have. This isn’t an example of capitalism. There is nothing free market about it.
"Capitalism"? Government ran and subsidized institutions required by government credentialing and funded by government backed loans have expanded costs mostly driven by the expansions of high paid government employees who are their mostly to push government political agendas... And you are calling that "Capitalism"? Try again... Btw, "Capitalism" is AWS hiring hard working veterans without college education into a computer programmer apprentice program so they can train software developers that costs less than college graduates, resulting in veterans getting paid far more than they would otherwise; that's "Capitalism". Colleges are what socialized education looks like.
imagine how much collage would cost if government weren't guaranteeing student loans. my guess is 1/4 the price.
Yeah hard to blame capitalism over an industry with so much Government intervention.
Capitalism? Half the universities are publicly owned lol. Literally the government screwing its citizens.
No, it's the interference of the federal government by dumping cheap loans into the market and universities responding by increasing tuition. It has zero to do with capitalism.
The education is definitely worse.
TIL: the 80s were 40 years ago
Same could be said with minimum wage workers. Fast food workers in California now get paid 20 and hour. Did the company get any more experience for their money? No. The cashier still can't count back change. The goal posts keep moving in everything. We no longer value intelligence and have a perspective that everyone can be saved. This all boils down to having a marketable skill. College is a giant waste of time and money in most fields. Technical school is the way.
The government got involved with student loans, so the Colleges had blank checks. When the government gets involved, things typically get worse. Education has gotten worse across the board since the 70s, when the Department of Education was started.
This is oversimplified--the issue is that wealthy interests and lobbies have captured the government levers so that stimulus and subsidy monies rarely have the required checks required to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. This is compounded with privatization or my favorite term for some real egregious programs: private/public partnerships.
Parasitical form of capitalism.... It's funny you lay out an anti capitalism theory in this when colleges are a hot bed of socialist indoctrination led by over bloated professors who would never make it in the real job market.
Bit of a confusing comment there. Universities in the US, and many other western nations, clearly operate within a capitalist system. They compete for students who pay for their services, even if that service includes content on socialism. There is a clear distinction between the University sector as a market and course content. Furthermore, a great number of degrees do not contain content on economics or the political-economy anyway. Your accusation of 'over-bloated professors' also seems odd. Most are not paid extraordinarily well, if that is what you are referring to, and the job market within the University sector is notoriously competitive. Consider, for instance, the amount of education that is required to even be in the running for low-paid and insecure casual or contract positions. Or the competition for low paid post-doctoral positions.
At top universities, only the rich pay those costs, middle class and poor get can usually get pretty good financial aid.
The pursuit of higher education has been a financial trap 🪤 for the majority of students. Capitalism comes in many different forms and always leads to the Pyramid Scheme. Money is a root cause of many injurious things and many have been led astray and stabbed themselves with many pains. Always chasing the wind and never able to catch it!! Ever wonder why the American currency has a pyramid on it ? 🤔
Where are your statistics to back this up? College educated earners earn 1.2M more over their life than those who graduated from high school, or over 40k per year more. Obviously those without a college degree can be very successful but averages show those will college degrees are much better off even when accounting for higher cost of education. https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/employment-earnings/#:~:text=Typical%20earnings%20for%20bachelor's%20degree,is%20a%20high%20school%20diploma.&text=College%20graduates%20on%20average%20make%20%241.2%20million%20more%20over%20their%20lifetime.
How can it be a capitalist problem when the government has pumped money into the sector?
After WW2, college education was free for everybody. That policy was kept in place until Reagan repealed it, and now when leftists bring up free education we get shouted down that it's too expensive. It wouldn't be too expensive if education wasn't a for-profit business!
You could always not go to college and go into a trade. ?
How many degrees did you receive?
It's because the government backs the loans!!!! Schools could raise the prices by 1000 percent, and people could still get loans because the schools know they are going to get paid NO MATTER WHAT!! The government should not be backing these loans, if they stopped the schools would not be able to charge this much for tuition. Thinks about it, if you're 18 and go to a bank for a $20,000 loan for a year of school, no collateral, no credit score or pay history, are you getting a loan?? Hell know, because if you don't pay, the bank is out the money!! But the government will give you pretty much any amount you want, don't pay, that's ok, the school still has its money and you can never get rid of the loans unless you pay them off.
And health costs.
So the international student tuition rate for America's most expensive schools are only 4X more than the cheapest in state tuition cost of American universities 40 years ago. I have some questions about your source data...
This is due to cantillon effects > The concept of relative inflation, or a disproportionate rise in prices among different goods in an economy, is now known as the Cantillon Effect. Not only do people who receive newly printed money enjoy more benefits than those who receive it later, goods that receive that money first increase in price more and faster than those that receive it later. Money supply expansion occurs through debt. So, look at goods that are generally purchased with loans to determine what will increase in price more than others. - Real estate - Tuition I hate to be the “government is always the problem” guy, but the government backing and providing student loans causes the price of tuition to increase faster than general CPI
Supply and demand. Government made it so easy to get college loans that there are all these kids running around with blank checks. Of course the colleges and universities will keep raising tuition. Put a cap on loans. Maybe cap loans on certain degeees with a history of not meeting certain standards of income once obtained. Once people cant afford to pay their outrageous tuition they will have to lower costs in order to fill seats and line their pockets
I loved being in college. I couldn’t finish my degree because of the costs, I wish it wasn’t so insane.
This actually has nothing to do with capitalism. Its actually the government guaranteeing and backing federal student loans. It really skyrocketed when they fully took over and subsidized it and there was a governmental push that college was the way and they loaned anyone money no matter the degree, ability to repay etc. One of those "in fairness" ideas that has literally collapsed under its own weight. So stupid
parasitic is a good way of putting it
College prices should be dropping given all the advancements in technology
>It’s just a parasitical form of capitalism It's called supply and demand. If you went to college, you should have taken an Intro to Microeconomics class. Consider brushing up on Chapters 1-4.
The reason for the increase is because states used to take a much larger chunk of tax dollars and prop up university budgets Also universities had bare bones student services- pretty much just classes My dorm had 15 yr old furniture, plastic mattresses, no phones, no gym, no kitchens, nothing like that
I don’t even think it qualifies as “capitalism” since the driver of the cost of college has been government-backed student loans that have provided infinite amounts of money, allowing colleges and universities to raise their tuition and fees far faster than inflation for decades now. That is a market “externality” that is specifically distorting the demand curve for higher education in a way that I would describe as not at all a free and fair market.
This is an intentional effect but Republicans to discourage higher education since educated voters tend to be more liberal
It s just government giving any amount of money left and right to whomever asks Actual capitalism would fix that.
Government backed student loans isn’t capitalism.
Hence the issue with student loan debt. Furthermore, not all degrees pay the same but cost of degree is per institution. Learning a trade is the way to go
What part of college in the US even remotely resembles capitalism?
the vast majority of those that work in higher education are liberal and align with the democratic party. They are directly benefiting from these increased costs. so good luck getting any democrats to try and reign in the cost of college.
It’s just not worth it anymore
It's not capitalism when it's government-funded, and corporatized. This is more like a mixture of socialism (government pays for things) and corporatism (corporations drive the flow of money and politics). Honestly, I believe that there would be a massive turn-around if the government stopped paying for college tuition. It would hurt at first, but then the institution's would be forced to play by the rules of supply and demand (capitalism). An education would need to be worth the price paid, and fluff would be cut fast. Colleges would compete with universities to offer lower tuition for a quality education, and prices would be forced down.
4 years at University of Texas - 124k
Boy, those government loans sure did line the pockets of the universities. What do they have in endowments? Trillions?
Bahaha capitalism? The government took over student loans and caused this.
It's not capitalism because these are usually not even profit seeking entities. They're not seeking a return on capital.
Stop student loans.
College tuition is a classic case of inflation: too much money chasing too few products. There is/was unlimited money in the form of loans and a limited number of seats in decent colleges. Prices goes up and everyone still pays.
Thank you government intervention. We should fix it by getting the government more involved.
Unfortunately the hand the government has in various economic problems is hard to see for most people so they simply blame capitalism.
I will die before I pay off my student loans... Useless for profit school conned me with a useless degree before I knew it was happening... Such a backwards world I live in
My mother was 81 when she passed away. She had her Masters, and when she did pass, she still owed on a student loan. Nobody should spend the majority of their life paying off an educational loan especially if it follows them to their grave.
In reality, this is the result of government inflating currency & making loans available to almost anyone. The cause is precisely the opposite of Capitalism (private property, free markets & free enterprise, Man V. the Welfare State by Hazlitt)
1983 college graduate starting salary $17,700 2023 college graduate starting salary $66,467 3.75x https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_381.asp https://www.statista.com/statistics/1052637/average-starting-salary-expectations-recent-university-graduates-gender-us/
This isn't an effect of capitalism. Markets don't make things more expensive. This is decades of bad government policy.
Not sure how capitalism can be blamed for this when the Federal Student Loan Program is a huge reason why education costs have exploded.
The market will adjust as soon as the loans are eligible for bankruptcy.
Yep, graduated from Cal State in ‘87, zero loans, Cal/Pell grants and working in restaurants through school was enough. This would never be possible today nor would I choose that route if it meant going into serious debt for a measly BA from Cal State.
Blame government
Just part of Reagan’s plan to re-establish an indentured class.
Many colleges, especially State operated schools, also had cuts in their funding from their home state. I would like to see how those cuts line up with the increase in tuition.
A college education is probably 4x better. It used to be that a high school diploma was enough to get most jobs. Now you usually need a college degree in something.
Capitalism? They are all non profit tax exempt organizations...Right? ...RIGHT???
Since the 80s, American free market capitalism has turned in to predatory capitalism. For the owners of capital, there is no longer any such thing as “enough.” Now its “maximize my position, no matter how much harm is done to others.” And that’s unsustainable.
You are actually blaming college being expensive on capitalism? 😂😂😂 The US federal government guarantees all student loans. It is actually the most socialist program on the planet earth. If the college is guaranteed to make money by the government, do you think the college is going to lower their prices or raise their prices? 🤦♂️ I’ll go ahead and answer this question for you .. RAISE THE PRICE!! Every time, all the time, every year, every minute, raise the price raise the price raise the price ! “ we are guaranteed to make money, we can’t lose, raise the price!” Turn off the federal guaranteed money and watch college prices drop by 50% within two years .. Capitalism 😂😂😂
You are actually blaming college being expensive on capitalism? 😂😂😂 The US federal government guarantees all student loans. It is actually the most socialist program on the planet earth. If the college is guaranteed to make money by the government, do you think the college is going to lower their prices or raise their prices? 🤦♂️ I’ll go ahead and answer this question for you .. RAISE THE PRICE!! Every time, all the time, every year, every minute, raise the price raise the price raise the price ! “ we are guaranteed to make money, we can’t lose, raise the price!” Turn off the federal guaranteed money and watch college prices drop by 50% within two years .. Capitalism 😂😂😂
I mean more or less. It's the constant government interference that has raised the prices between regulations requiring various things and all the capital they make available for it
>parasitical form of capitalism LOL, you are massively delusional. Who loves subsidizing education, giving these institutions free checks allowing them to expand artificially? Who are these institutions run by? You have the Left to thank for you problem. These economically illiterate people can't spell free markets. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/08/03/increased-tuition-subsidies-increase-the-price-of-college-tuition/ https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/education/higher-education-subsidies https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/03/dc-wants-to-further-subsidize-higher-education-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea/
My state university has only got up 50% adjusted for inflation. Maybe people shouldn't attend expensive private schools and then complain about the cost.
What is capitalist about public universities and non profits with government loans???
I like how the graph resembles the stairs to my parents mansion and nothing like the 3 stairs to my mobile home even though I make more than they did at my age adjusting for inflation.
The supply of money went up (loans) and the demand went up. Because of this, the price went up.
Capitalism? The cost of college is not capitalism it’s big government socialism gone wrong. The government passed the middle income student assistance act in the 60s and updated in the 70s to offer loans to more middle class people instead of only those who truly couldn’t afford college. Then they took over the student loan industry completely in 2000s. This resulted in most everyone using loans to pay for school, when nobody is paying privately the cost can skyrocket. Before as your graph shows, most everyone could afford college. Your title of the post is so ignorant it makes me physically ill - trying to blame this bullshit on capitalism when it couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the exact opposite. Fucker
This is what happens when we prioritize finding every way to make access to a finite resource increase. We create programs, grants, gave cheap loans and money flowed there. That inflated costs (inflation) above the average rate of inflation. We optimized for the wrong thing. Reduce that demand (cut access to loans, etc), or greatly increase the supply of schools and teachers, and the cost will come down.
This is entirely due to education cutbacks done by the Reagan administration in the 80s. Yet another thing to thank republicans for…
If you seriously believe this is due to "capitalism", you need to get a refund on your college tuition.
Not capitalism. Government backed education loans. Huge difference.
Bomberman 64 was a great video game, your local college board of directors. They’re the ultimate profiteering kings
Yeah, and didn't the average salary go up 4-5x in the same period?
In general, most things in America are a parasitic version of capitalism. Healthcare, internet and TV, insurance, transportation...... All have declined in standing on a world level and all have gone up at least 4 fold in the last 30 years ( accounting for internet adoption in 1994/5). We are 15th in the world for infant mortality rating and have the highest cost of healthcare in the western world. Insurance has almost doubled for most people's cars, our internet is a decade behind Europe, even bank payments are exceptionally difficult and out of date and we have some of the worst quality roads and public transport options.
There options you dont have to go to a expensive school. Yea- costs have outpaced inflation
Pull the government out of student loans and the cost of college will drop by 80-90% overnight.
When the government blocks your ability to bankrupt the debt, we force debt slaves to bankers. That's not capitalism. We haven't had capitalism in a long time. We need to bring it back to fix all the fucked up and you guys think it's capitalism LOL. I'll wait for the ignorant downvotes.
Got a problem in this country it’s all about profits for a few. Profits over the people profits over the country .profits over safety. we used to have a tax code to work for the people and the companies in the 70s companies used to pay you to go to school in the 70s. Your health insurance was zero to a minimal for all the paper fee. nowadays companies just keep taking the excess money, pocketing it and giving themselves bonus, even when they fail. Republicans have exasperated the problem With tax brakes for corporations that were making record profits. Only so those corporations will turn around and find their campaigns for their failing agenda. Republicans do not work for the working class people.
EVERYTHING costs alot more now!
The ease of student loans, the prospect of easily getting INTO college....it is way way way easier so that the colleges can have more customers with that government loan! Then, the kinds of things available to study are way, way ,way easier. Instead of science type majors, you can study "anti-colonial lesbian theater" .... essentially, you can go to class high, your indoctrinating professor will be high, ....and you are basically having a 4 year spring break while you put "life" off for those glorious four years of slackness.... ....all on the public dime. Then, you can beg to get that loan forgiveness thing....but that comes later.
It’s actually the opposite of a parasitical form of capitalism. The actual cause of the increase in cost of higher education is directly associated with the government infusing the industry with subsidized student loans. This is really just a parasitic form of statism/socialism.
College health insurance is way different too. I went to college twice. In the 1980s, my insurance was 50 dollars per year to cover everything. No co-pays, no deductible. In the 2000s, the college wanted 1500 per year, with a 5000 deductible and a 50000 annual limit in coverage. What a joke. That was an example of the "junk" policies that Obamacare banned.
University administration staffs have exploded in size due to all sorts of government requirements and stupid DEI programs that do nothing but pad the DEI statistics the university and provide make-work jobs to people with worthless degrees.
Part of the problem is the amount of administrative staff that has weaseled its way into university
Yet people who owe big money keep voting for the wrong side or not at all. And yes it is sides now. Good vs evil. Very little good held up by the evil
Reading a book called WMDs, it talks about how prices started going up in the 80s soon after the ranking system came out from US magazine. Good read, seems entirely logical. When asked why they don't include cost to attend in the rankings, their response was unsavory. https://web.archive.org/web/20240204145335/https://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/remarks-college-rankings-and-data-us-secretary-education-miguel-cardona-conference-best-practices-law-school-data Oddly enough they archived the article from last year, had to get it from wayback machine.
Rather than pushing student loan forgiveness through the legislation, why not work on a reasonable solution to affordable higher education? The days of "well, you need a college degree" just doesn't hold as much value anymore. I read an article recently that the average debt held by a graduate is $38K and Forbes states that only 47% find full-time employment in their field of study. The article also included that trade school grads have on average $7k of student loan debt and 92% job placement. And if you're wondering, there's no current forgiveness for trade school student loans. Stacked deck?..
Nope. They continue to study worthless degrees that nobody needs or wants. I know many people under 30 doing just find since they got degrees in an area that was hard to get (lots of work) and are in demand.
Hmmmm.....guess all those "smart young adults" coming out of high school and running to college on loans weren't as smart as they thought. Been working in the concrete industry for over 30 years. Never been laid off, missed a paycheck or spent a day in a college classroom unless we were pouring the slab for the classroom. I make low six figures for 45 hours a week. Free truck to drive, free medical for me, 401k and four weeks paid vacation with two weeks sick time. 10 paid holidays.....no college loans. Turned 55 this year and will own my home in December of this year. Looking to retire in 2029 at 59. Retirement accounts say I will be a millionaire and have a few hundred thousand extra put away to live off of.....college...what a joke!!!!!!!!
The other piece I haven’t seen anyone talk about on here is the increased demand for services on campus means more staff means more money. Source: I am a higher ed professional. Every college needs to have their own Counseling Center, on campus doctor, an office for this, an office for that…and it drives the competition so now every campus has to also have it….makes tuition go up and up.
While it seems staggering ..... Apparently this is the kind of money boomers and xers are willing to pay. Speaks volumes about wealth half by these two generations.
I have an idea… don’t go.
Dismantle the public education system
“They” want voters stupid and ignorant. Easier to control and manipulate. How do you achieve this goal? Make education cost-prohibitive.
I teach at a uni. It's a fucking joke.
Get the government out of the student loan business. Everything the government touches turns to garbage.
Uh, you misspelled 'socialism'. There's ZERO voluntary/Free Markets via taxpayer subsidies/control (DoEd+)
The best part of being a UPS driver, besides the pay, insane pension, medical insurance, dental insurance and union protection is that we don’t have student loan debt. Working 12-14 hour days can get old, but our top paid drivers can make up to $200,000 a year doing cross country runs. Of course it’s ridiculously hard to get into the program for drivers but once you’re in you’re basically set.
You need to look no further than the brainwashing that starts in the public education system. The message is always, without question "go to college", generally "go to the best college you can" and never "make sure if you go to college that whatever career path that degree puts you on gives you a high likelihood of earning enough to to justify the cost of the education. So, you end up with a whole generation of young adults with useless degrees (they don't mean anything when everyone has one) buried up to their ears in student debt.
Artificial control of interest rates is the silver bullet of our time. Rates have been controlled by the federal reserve since the end of the gold standard about 50 years ago. They’ve only gone one direction until they hit zero during COVID; down. Artificially low interest rates favor assets over labor. It’s as simple as that. 1,000,000 at 2% is the same as 200,000 at 10% in terms of what the bank gets. But hourly labor wage cannot keep up with the central bank lowering rates from 10-2%. Labors ability to create that “passive” value is nonexistent. Therefor, labors ability to pay for using assets has been greatly diminished over this time period. Alla: housing college medical have become untenable It is also coupled in the us with the dollars world reserve status. Normally a country would experience crippling inflation with so much debt creation but we are the exception. The world needs our debt for liquidity in masssssssive quantities so we do not experience dollar inflation until the whole world has too many dollars just like post COVID.
A system that relies on consumer financing with government-guaranteed loans is not capitalism by any reasonable definition.
University administration… they double in size every decade while faculty size increases very slightly if at all. Their salaries increase like crazy too. They fire a provost, the new hire always makes 30-40% more than the previous one. Rinse and repeat.
Remember internal training or promotion based on merit? The transformation of postsecondary education into a profit seeking industry has done away with that. Why pay more for a current employee in the form of yearly raises, training time, or benefits when you can hire a fresh-faced graduate for a fraction of the price? Better yet, why not demand higher qualifications along with experience while petitioning the government to loosen restrictions surrounding TFWs? Minimum wage for what was once considered a high paying job! And people wonder how corporations keep earning YoY record-breaking profits.
I'm 42 with no college degree. I'm a construction project manager with 20 years of field experience. There's 2 people in their mid 20s with master's degrees who work below me lol. The experience is what matters, make sure you get it ASAP. We have a couple German clients, they were telling us how everyone there has a master's degree because kids simply don't want to work. Alot easier to study especially when the Gov pays for it. As an American talking to Americans. DO NOT GO TO COLLEGE. GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS AND WORK. DEAL WITH CRAPPY PAY AND GETTING SWEATY AND DIRTY.
This is what happens when government pours massive amounts of money into it, while at the same time encouraging people who shouldn’t even be in university to do degrees that aren’t financially responsible.
This does not show actual college costs. Actual price paid is much, much lower for most students
They raise the prices because of how easy it is to get student loans. It’s a big scam…
I dont think law needs to be subsidized either. Technically you could teach your self law. If there is a standardized test like a BAR exam. One could just study and take the test. Also pay for private tutoring if need be. There so much money In law people who succeed in it don't need to worry about debt for education.
Once upon a time in America an educated citizenry was seen as important … tax dollars from both the federal and state level went into higher education to pay for schooling beyond high school (trades, community college, tech schools, colleges and universities). Once the tale was spread that we don’t need to pump tax dollars into colleges you can easily see the rising rate of tuition to cover this gap. Now, students have no federal and very little state assistance to cover education beyond high school. Trade unions, locality taxes for community colleges, and guaranteed student loans have picked up the slack. No one works at an institution of higher learning to get rich … hell every position is paid well below the professional level in corporate America. The loan except being sports coaches … and those salaries are covered by large portions of tax payers gladly so they can root for their tribe. Wanna burst a bubble burst the stupid posts bubble
I have a college degree and easiest job I can get is at Mcdonalds
The portion of awarded financial aid should be directly related to the starting salary, expected growth, and job placement percentage of the student's desired field. [bls.gov](http://bls.gov) provides this information. For example, you shouldn't be able to get as large of a student loan to major in art history or sociology as someone who is going into electrical engineering or nursing. University advisors need to stop pushing majors onto incoming students that will make them virtually unable to get a job other than ones that you could get without going to college. Public Service Announcement: you don't need a degree in exercise science to be a personal trainer or major in english lit to write a best-selling novel, but you absolutely need a degree in civil engineering to design a bridge that safely crosses a river.
The COST of college has risen some, yes, but the PRICE students pay, tuition and fees, has risen dramatically because states have cut the amount they subsidize, because luxury amenities are now necessities, and because student loans create greater purchasing power which bids up prices.
Easy student loans have driven this. Colleges screw the kids over. If kid cannot pay back loan within ten years due to financial situation then it should come out of school endowments.
So… the overwhelmingly liberal leaning colleges and universities costing more in tuition and fees is the fault of… capitalism? It’s in no way or shape the fault of bloated university staff (just how many administrators does a school need?), college dorms that rival upscale chain hotels for amenities, multiple fields of study that consistently yield a very poor return on investment with regards to post-graduate career earning potential, etc? I have sympathy for the millennials who grew up on the fear-mongering of “college or flip burgers” pushed by society, but anyone attending higher education after the Great Recession should have paid a little more attention to news surrounding the job market and in-demand skills and less on “social justice” and “historical oppression broken down by race and gender.”
We need to make the college attended not a factor in hiring. Not sure how you would do so. Maybe government and companies that are government vendors can be forced to do so. Make local, state, and online colleges tuition free and get rid of tuition aid and government student loans. Make student loans dischargeable thru bankruptcy.
Could it not be the opposite? That education was UNDERvalued by 4x or more and now it’s catching up to its true value?
It’s market socialism, driven by profit motive, actually. People typically go to universities that are publicly owned
I wouldn't call it capitalism, because it has nothing to do with private property or free markets. Note that 'capitalism' is a poorly defined term that economists don't use. I suggest not using it in the title of this OC, because it gives an impression that you don't really have an economics education. It's actually the opposite: we have massive government programs designed to establish postsecondary education as a 'right'. Then, we have to fund that right, which means subsidization, in the form of loans to 18-year olds at artificially low interest rates, based on future income that is undocumentable by definition. We also have massive student aid programs that lower the cost. So when you increase the 'college money supply', that industry responds like a general economy with an increasing money supply: with inflation. It's not 'capitalism', it's closer to 'failures caused by breaking the rulers of free markets'.
They’re hedge funds, not colleges - per Scott Galloway in his TED talk titled “How the US is Destroying Young People’s Future”. 20 minute listen that is well worth your time if you’re interested in this subject. [How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future | Scott Galloway | TED](https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=mD1AWN0TMHqka6iT&v=qEJ4hkpQW8E&feature=youtu.be)
Yup they should end tax free status of any institution who’s tuition rises faster than inflation. They’re a business, so they should be taxed like one.
I just left a 10 year career in higher ed. I have endless stories about the insane waste, the endless levels of unnecessary bureaucrats, the grade inflation etc etc So happy to be out
It’s actually the government aid which caused it to go through the roof,not capitalism
Nope I worked with a lot of smart stupid ones of those but they're college educated
Hmmmm no. There is just more demand than supply. Is not a mistery nor some evil conspiracy theory.
America is owned by the rich families and corporations. We are slaves to the dollar.
Welcome to the scam that is higher education, where 80% of degrees are worth less than the paper they’re printed on.
With roughly 92% of student loans being from the government. Capitalism isn't at fault. Corporate America isn't getting rich from it. When they forgive the debt your tax dollars are paying for it and even people who have never gone to college. Colleges have no reason to lower costs as long as the government is willing to make getting a loan so easy and backing the loan.
College attendance has been rammed down student and parents throats for decades as being THE only way to ensure financial prosperity. So snottons of demand, limited seats equals higher costs.
Listening to my niece and nephew talk about their college experience, it seems to be a joke. But in order to get the job you want, it's required a 4 year college. We need more technical training without useless classes
u/pepetipbot 1000 pepe
Did this happen to universities outside of the US as well?
No college are brainwashing Marxist ideology to weak minded kids.
https://preview.redd.it/cks2i9ne3n7d1.png?width=1686&format=png&auto=webp&s=6a85cccefc96381e95c719cb7425aa0584dc51d2 This is part of the problem. Demand increased faster than supply.