this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago

Gotta make indentured servants somehow.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I mean if you can afford a 70k/tuition you probably already know how economics works...

Let me ask, why are you sending your child to that expensive college and not a local community college?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Because he wanted to go there & we can afford it. Plus it’s ranked as one of the best in the world for economics.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 hours ago

You just answered your own question to why it's so expensive. While a community college is still overpriced nowadays, it would probably be 1/10th of the cost. But if you're willing to pay 70k a year then obviously someone is willing to take that much money from you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago

Most community colleges are very affordable, if not free with financial aid. At many state universities, many students who are low income can qualify for free tuition.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Because THOSE schools are expensive.

- IN STATE VS OUT OF STATE -

I went to a SUNY (State university) about 18 yrs ago and it was $3,000/semester. Today it’s $3,500/semester, so it didn’t go up by much. I stayed in state so it was lower for me. If you are not from the state it was $10,000/ semester (still on the lower end). Compare that to other people in other schools taking the same major as me. It was about 20,000/ semester for in state. We all ended up at the same jobs, I just didn’t carry the debt.

For the US, staying in state helps a lot. Unfortunately I think the grand idea of moving away and dorming is pushed onto kids by the media. Another comparison, my wife, who also went to school in the same state as me, went to at a CUNY (City University) and it was $1,800/semester. It was a pretty great school and campus, but not a school you’d see in the movies or tv shows. We both chose to stay within our means and not put a burden on ourselves or our families. Today we are very successful with no debt.

- SCHOOLS AS BRAND -

One more thing that drives price, is that schools are also brands now, and you are paying for that. There is peer pressure to get into schools with better awareness. Same reason a kid would rather wear apparel from nike vs walmart. My niece just started college this year and was brainwashed into picking a school she couldn’t afford. They took out a loan and the school end up being horrible for her. She dropped out during the last semester and I was told all the money spent this year was a wash. She’s now going to end up going to the school her family originally recommended to her. There are plenty of schools in the states that are good and wont cost an arm and a leg.

- CLASS FLUFF -

For the sake of keeping kids in school they pack in so many additional unneeded electives. I think I had to take 11 within my first 2yrs and each of my classes was 3hrs long. Some days I would have 9hrs of class. That is not including the down time in between those clases, so I could be there around 11-12hrs on a single day. If you want to keep a part time job to help pay for college, then that may mean you have to take additional winter and summer classes. In a lot of places this isn’t covered during the regular months so you have to pay for more. This fluff is one of the ways they keep bachelors and masters programs to run for as long as they do and at the prices they do. Some of these schools do run expedited programs where if you have previous electives that transfer over, you can do your degree in half of the time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

All the schools rip off the rich to subsidize the middle class. You're essentially subsidizing a bunch of students who are paying close to nothing.m, because you can afford $70k tuition.

As another example, Harvard is free for anyone whose family makes less than $85k per year. Not just the tuition ($56k per year), but also the housing (worth $13k), food ($8k), health insurance ($1600), books, and a modest living stipend designed to cover things like a computer, commuting/travel, other expenses.

And those who make up to $150k per year are capped at 10% of their income to pay for all that. In the end, the average cost of Harvard for the typical student is about $15,000 per year including housing and food.

In other words, attending Harvard is cheaper than not attending school for anyone whose families make less than $150k, which is basically 75% of the nation. So if you're actually paying full tuition, you're probably pretty rich.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago

Only thing I'll disagree with is they're not ripping off the rich, because it doesn't matter to the rich. They're killing the middle class though, but that is the way it's been and the way it will continue to be. You will either be rich (haha, jk) or poor, and that's the end game.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

side effects of Boomer economic policies and their ignorance regarding the changes they caused

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

My parents paid for me to attend a private university in the late 80's, for which I'm both extremely fortunate and grateful.

I wanted to do the same for my children, but there was no way. I pay half, my parents pay half, and my kids have very small loans.

I was experiencing significant disappointment that I wasn't able to pay for my kids' education the way my parents paid for mine.

At one point I used an inflation calculator to get an idea of how much my education cost in today's dollars, and it turns out that when it's corrected for inflation, I'm paying what my parents paid. My kids' education is more than twice as expensive as mine was if you correct for inflation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

learning is just a sidehustle to the sports franchise they run?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 hours ago

Idk why you phrased that as a question as if it isn’t pretty obvious

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

Same reason everything in the US is expensive: we have largely unregulated, runaway capitalism which pervades every facet of life. Everything from housing to academia to health care is for profit -- not only profit, but for obscene year-over-year increases in profit. Those at the top regularly make money hand over fist even selling basic necessities, and if they don't continue taking more and more, they're seen as failures and replaced by one who will.

The cherry on top is that, for the most parts, the citizens no longer have any real power to change any of it.

Around the same time that health care becomes affordable in the US (major hypothetical, of course), it probably means a wind change has occurred such that university costs would also be coming down. But it would be a systematic change.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

Corporate greed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

Because there's nothing more American than getting ripped off.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

This is a private school so they don't get much in the way of direct government funding. State-funded schools are considerably cheaper. I went to Wright State University in Ohio. Right now it's about $13k/yr in tuition. This is still rather expensive on a global scale.

Why do private schools charge that much? Because people (like you) will pay that much. What about the University of Chicago makes it so that you are willing pay for it? What do you or your son hope to get out of it that a school in your home country (I'm assuming Canada) can't give him? To compare to Wright State, even for out-of-country students the tuition is less than half of Chicago's tuition. Is the benefit of going to Chicago worth that much more? If it is, then that is exactly what you're paying for.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago (5 children)

Because Reagan defunded public secondary education. And then instead of fixing that in the late 90s/early 00s, they made school loans non expungable and federally guaranteed, so schools didn't need to keep their process know and competitive anymore.

It always goes back to Reagan...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

The government also ramped up the interest rates on student loans while universities increased the price faster than inflation, I paid around 3-4% in 2008, the lowest was around 2.7% in 2020, currently they are close to 7%. The whole thing should be covered by state and federal taxes we're already paying to subsidize them, but it just keeps getting worse to squeeze every drop of blood from people who weren't born with a trust fund.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

This is the real answer I was looking for in the comments.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

Sure, I guess post-secondary is the term usually used

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Yep, this needs to be higher. Since student loans are guaranteed and pushed on all students, universities have been spending oodles of fucking money to justify higher tuition costs, which justifies bigger loans that can never be discharged. The banks win, the schools win, the student lose both academically and financially.

Public universities could actually have stricter requirements on who could go to college, because if it's already funded by taxes, you don't want to be throwing money away on students who will fail out of the degree path they're trying to pursue.

Finally, two words: "Legacy Admissions"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 hours ago

Jesus Christ, so many people don't know the real history of what happened while this is the real answer.

To add on to Ronald "Fucking" Reagan defunding universities, he did it because as governor of California he absolutely hated the anti-Vietnam War protests happening on University of California campuses and thought a good way to limit attendance of 'rabble rousing' (re: poor) students was to take away their funding. Conservatives nationwide saw this and thought 'that's great, we should do that, too.' and they did.

Thanks Ronnie. You're the unwanted microwaved dog shit that ruined America 40 years and your stink is still smelled in full force to this day. I didn't believe in hell, but I hope they made a special one just for you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

Greed. Come on were you really expecting a different response?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

If we can reason and communicate effectively then we're much harder to exploit.

Education is priced above the balance of supply and demand because in wider scope it's more profitable to deny access.

Denial of access to education is a very good way to leave many people with violence as their only practical means of change.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Because people are still paying it. That's how you set the price of things. If people are paying 70k why would you sell it cheaper?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

If you can charge for something mandatory (minimum requirement for a decent job, house, healthcare) then you can set whatever price you want for it. You just need to push it to the limit of what people can finance to keep paying for over their whole lives.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago

Administrative bloat. At my university, if my lab lands a grant, 60% goes to the university and only 40% is used for actual research. There's a long chain of people whose jobs are to answer emails, and they all need to be paid.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago

Nobody knows. Serious, there are a lot of factors people will point to in here. Some of them are real factors, but every time I dig in I discovered that they do not explain everything. Prices have gone up much faster than inflation for decades even after accounting for government subsidies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 hours ago

Because it's worth it!

lol jk

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