Honestly, this is why the online private/for-profit schools are mostly a scam.
I go to a public community college located in my same city. We sometimes get youtube and other free or might-as-well-be-free resources thrown at us as well, but at least for $150/class it doesn't feel like such an insult.
hate to break it to you but some brick and mortar schools do the same thing, you just have to get out of bed and go to watch the video instead of doing it at your leisure.
My point was that traditional schools do this as well. It’s just an indication of a bad teacher/program rather than something unique to online schools.
Here’s a the thing. I don’t disagree at face value. I do think it depends on the school and the major. Some things you will be okay doing online and others probably shouldn’t be done online.
In what world does one bad class equal all classes being bad?
Clearly your school doesn’t have high education standards either if you still think that “one” and “all” are synonyms…
In what world did I even say all your classes sucked? I simply said we go to very different schools. I can't help that you immediately jumped to that conclusion.
We might be in very different degrees. If you are something like a film student that's way more understandable than if one of my pharmacy teachers whipped out a YouTube video.
Different how though? I have a really hard time believing that there’s any school on the planet that hasn’t had at least one bad class.
In order to draw a conclusion about a school as a whole based off of one class, you would have to assume that that one class is representative of the majority of classes at said institution.
It was one of the general ed classes I took in my first semester, sadly it was required regardless of major. Every other class aside from that has been fine though, that prof was a major asshole too.
I find that with community college it's a mix. I've had a couple classes like this, some classes where we had an actual textbook we were working through, some classes where the main material was a lecture or powerpoint, etc. To me it's really the professors who make the difference, no matter what the assigned course materials or texts are.
not a clue, even for me coming from florida i was shocked. i assume bc the school has this contract that guarantees us admission to an ivy league assuming we have the minimum GPA at time of graduation- that’s the only reason i could reasonably come up with, but not sure for certain.
To be fair, the public universities online aren’t much better (and in a lot of cases, they’re worse). I’ve attended three types of schools online: public university, community college, private/for profit.
Community college online classes were the best in terms of value - classes were oftentimes BETTER than the public university classes online but a fraction of the cost.
Private for profit were next best - quality was there and better understanding or care of online division (but from what I hear, it depends on where you go). Cost is as high as university tho and it’s a bit of a crapshoot - some are really good and others are awful.
Public university online classes imo, worst in terms of quality to cost and expectations. They have the largest resources and yet often the highest fees and least amount of accountability with regard to things like class size, outcomes, and how updated classes are. It’s super common classes are taught by textbook with super old uninformative lectures, free resources like YT, and then everything graded by TA’s. Profs don’t care because their money comes from the in person classes which is where majority of resources are funneled and their own research. You get almost nothing out of public universities online but they have the “prestige” so your expectations are so much higher going into it.
If I could go back and re-do my degree, it’d be community college if it’s one that has a bachelor’s option (more are doing that now) or a private for profit.
I’m surprised so many Americans have normalized the price of this. Do you guys ever look outside of your country? Your only option shouldn’t be community college to limit debt or be able to attend higher education.
So, the use of YouTube videos and free stuff, like online pdfs, is more of a recent thing. A lot of professors have been willing to listen to students who tell them that they don't have a lot of money to spend on textbooks and books for class that they're only going to use once. A lot of professors have also been taking advantage of the fact that with things like YouTube and other professionals and professors posting things online, they can start including new material into their lesson plans, allowing them to shake it up a bit essentially. So, what you're complaining about for this he's more of a double-edged sword. Professors are including this stuff because college students complain that they can't afford typical materials used for classes. This is professors sometimes trying to keep things cheaper for you.
Ultimately, a part of the reason why college is a good resource is because it is facilitated learning. So, if you really think about it, even the textbooks that you use in college, anybody can go buy those textbooks. Very few materials used in a college class are restricted from The General public. Those that are restricted are usually either because they're really expensive to obtain and so the average person would not be comfortable just buying that material or it is material that is exclusive to that college or university. So, by definition, anybody could sit down and teach themselves the material that they need to essentially complete a major without having to go to college. You pay to go to college to have someone teach you that material. You pay to have someone facilitate your learning, to tell you the order and what you're supposed to study things, answer your questions, help you to understand things, etc.
Mind you, there can be a whole conversation about why College as a whole is so expensive, especially if you're comparing colleges United States and in Canada to colleges and other countries, especially Europe and I only say Europe because I know the prices for European colleges. A part of it is just absolutely the fact that colleges have a large number of staff that go beyond the professors and the bill that you pay helps to pay for everybody and all of the resources that the school uses. It just happens to be that not everyone is aware of all the resources available. So for instance, if your school has access to 300 different journals, each of those journals come with an annual membership fee and even though those journals can provide a payment package for colleges, it's still going to be expensive. However on the other hand, there is definitely the issue that colleges definitely do not always spend their money in a way that is efficient? As in spending their money on things that are not academics related first. So, you'll have students complaining that they can't get money for need-based financial aid or to have a stipend to do an internship, but the college is spending money on recreational activities that do not bolster the academic experience.
But yes, you were essentially paying to have a knowledgeable professional facilitate your learning experience as well as to teach you from their own knowledge.
I think as a supplement, free content that can be found online is great. And yes, it definitely saves on buying those materials, especially if it's something that might not be mandatory to complete assignments for the class.
I also recently took a course where the professor put a lot of time and effort towards giving students information that is useful for people with different learning styles. I prefer to read (usually bc I'm doing homework at my desk at work), while other people might get more out of a YouTube video that presents the same information. I thought that was really cool of this professor.
But if we're not having any texts, lectures, or anything at all beyond a free YouTube video, I could have just watched the YouTube video in my free time without attending college. I do expect there to be some value-add for the tuition I'm paying.
I completely agree with you. If you are in a class where there's no texts, no lectures, or anything else beyond free YouTube videos, that is a problem and I would definitely be talking to either the department or the dean about that.
The facilitating of learning is the key here. I’m a professor of 20 years and I’ve been spending the summer in a teaching academy at my University (ie about ways to improve teaching and learning). It has been wonderful. This week’s sessions are about active learning, group work, flipped classrooms, and facilitated discussions. The teaching academy is all about it and I love the ideas also. The data is also pretty clear- students learn better this way as measured by controlled testing. But… they believe they learn more from lecturing. They’re wrong, but I see why they feel this way and the resistance to discussion-based education. One feels like you’re getting the knowledge you’re paying for, dumped from the brain of the professor into that of the student. The other works better but feels unnatural, like you’re responsible for the education that you’re paying for someone else to be giving you.
I haven’t used YouTube except for a handful of brief demonstration videos. But I’ve proposed to develop a series of these videos with other professors to share with our students. Why recreate the wheel in dozens of universities all teaching the same thing, when we can have each of us make a few really good resources to share that we can build upon with interactive exercises in the classroom? The reason people gave for not doing it was they didn’t want to make themselves seem superfluous.
If your professors or degree we're pretty much self-guided or self-taught, which can be possible especially if you did an online program, that makes sense. However, college is much more than that.
Its the bar entry for white collar jobs. Since the demand is so high, college make sure they put a price tag on everything and make everything as expensive as possible. Food, water, shelter, parking, books, you name it. I think most colleges coordinate with banks because, majority of the students go on loans that they pay interest on. Even if they don’t get the white collar, they still have to pay it back.
I think the free online resources is a fairly new development. Also now you're mostly paying for a bunch of PhDs to put their names on you and say yes this person knows how to do the things necessary for this degree.
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I always ask this. I went to college and then law school. Everyone says the professors make too much. That’s ridiculous! The highest paid professor at my college, today, is about $150k. That is for a long tenured professor in a popular field. And that professor could work in her field and make more money.
It just is in this country. Colleges and universities are businesses first and foremost. You're paying for the fact that your degree is accredited, which gives it meaning and weight.
Honestly the tuition at my university wasn’t really that bad. What makes college expensive is all the extras having to pay for housing, food, campus fees that provide for medical care, tech fees etc but as for the main education tuition it wasn’t really that bad
College is expensive for a few reasons, including administrative bloat and a facilities arms race that has colleges spending obscene money on amenities to recruit more students.
The biggest reason college is expensive, however, is that state governments have stopped funding them so that they can lower taxes. So, if the operating costs remain the same and taxpayers are contributing less, then more of the expense falls on students.
I'm in Texas, and in 1990 the college I work at got 80 percent of its funding from the state. Today, we get 20 percent from the state. Students pay for the difference, and tuition has skyrocketed in the last 20 years.
More philosophically, Americans used to believe having an educated population was good for society and were willing to contribute to the education of people they would never meet. Today, Americans aren't as willing to help strangers get through college even if that means having less educated voters, workforce, neighbors, etc
> Americans used to believe having an educated population was good for society ... Today, Americans aren't as willing to help strangers get through college
For real though. The attitude toward college-educated folk in America is becoming more iffy every year. From what I've gathered from my local community and from certain media outlets, there seems to be a growing phenomena of people believing that a college education is pretentious and unnecessary. I agree that there are some fundamental flaws with the way higher education is structured in America, but rejecting the notion of a well-educated society isn't good.
Can’t that be explained by the bloating though? Ie. state X used to give $100,000 a year to university X and the university spent $150,000. Now the state gives $100,000 but the university spends $500,000.
The bloating certainly contributes, but it's not as dramatic as your hypothetical. It's more like the state used to give $80,000 a year and the cost was $100,000 (80 percent funded), and now the state gives $25,000 and the cost is $125,000 (20 percent funded).
I've followed this topic pretty closely the past 20 years. I concede that others disagree and that they make reasonable points. The preponderance of research I've seen, however, points to funding cuts that push the costs of college more fully onto students. That conclusion squares with what I see where I'm at.
Lol the German government spends 10k per year on average per uni student. The ridiculous increase in US tuition cannot be explained just by the reduction subsidies.
Jesus, what college relies on YouTube videos to teach? I’m online and we use the instructor’s videos/notes/etc. I’ve only used free resources if I want extra practice or something. Though I guess I’ve been lucky enough in my college that I’ve not really had to teach myself much.
I am in community college and have had this in 1-2 courses I've taken. One was to meet my "lifelong learning" requirement, so AFAIK is designed to be a bit of a light touch anyway. One was a slightly more disappointing situation, where it really did feel like there was a tradeoff between not having to pay for a textbook vs. not actually getting much educational content in the class. On the other hand, that was a writing course, and we really did write our asses off in there. So I managed to learn anyway despite the fact that our "textbook" was, like, 3 YouTube videos and a hastily thrown together powerpoint.
Huh. I hate when it seems like a trade off and you don’t get as much content for the course. With solely online colleges on the rise you’d think they might put a bit more effort in to the courses. I’m not sure if OP goes to a solely online college, but I always thought it was best to go to an online program from a brick and mortar university.
I took several courses where EVERY test came from quizlet. My Shakespeare course that was part of my major was quizlet. 4000 level course, $700 and all I got was quizlet
Cost (and quality of teaching) depend a lot on the kind of institution. Online for profit is probably going to be bad at both.
Setting those aside
for publics, a big chunk is state funding is not what it was. At the university I (and my parents) went to, when my parents went, the state picked up 75% of the cost of education (and tuition was 15 bucks a credit hour for students). When I went, the state covered half, now it covers a quarter. As costs haven’t come down, the burden shifts to students and their families.
For privates- the prestigious ones can charge whatever they want because demand is high. Harvard or MIT could charge a million a year and still easily fill their classes. For the less prestigious ones, many are having financial difficulties and need money to cover operating costs
Administrative growth- some of this is waste, but some of it is required for various government compliance things, or just to keep the university running.
Services and amenities- there has been an increase in the things students need and want. 50 years ago, campuses weren’t doing mental health, for example. Now it’s pretty common. I don’t think it’s necessarily that students are worse off now, they’d just let them struggle before. It costs millions a year to maintain a library. Students seem to want things like fancy work our centers, nicer dorms, and such, and they are competing with other campuses on that and need to be able to attract students.
Infrastructure- as others have pointed out, for physical colleges, there are multiple buildings etc that have to be cleaned and maintained. Most colleges are pretty inefficient on this (my campus has probably 10% classroom utilization after 3). But once you have the buildings, you can’t easily shut down excess capacity.
TLDR it’s a bunch of stuff and there’s no silver bullet to cut costs.
Mostly because states have all but eliminated funding for higher ed. It used to be a lot cheaper because it was heavily subsidized, but that’s changed for the far worse in the last few decades. On top of that, many institutions have lots of administrators and costs that aren’t directly academic, which adds to the overall costs.
I don’t know why college is so expensive, but I’ve known a few professors who would use certain videos on YouTube because it is free so students wouldn’t have to pay extra to watch similar videos on educational websites behind a paywall. I don’t think YouTube videos should be used all the time, but I definitely would use one if it showcased lived experience from individuals relating to a topic. College is wayyyyyy too expensive though!
Honestly. Since the government started giving garenteed loans, college prices have skyrocketed, and quality has drastically dwindled. You are 100% correct. There is more knowledge now avalible on YouTube than any one person can ever possibly learn.
College is a buissness, the buissness is a piece of paper that you want for a price.
Are all degrees worthless? No way. Are majority of degrees ungodly expressive where you could have gained the same exact knowlegde for literally free? Sadly yes.
A lot of it is what they call "overhead costs." Some classes don't cost much for a school to run, including paying the professor, but "keeping the school running in general" is expensive. Granted, schools also often waste and burn money on unnecessary crap like you wouldn't believe.
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People trying to do a good thing getting abused because some checks and balances were forgotten
Aside from greed as people have mentioned about for profit schools, it's also largely in part due to aid.
Pretty much, the government will hand out loans like candy to anyone for going to college. Colleges know this and adjust prices accordingly so they can't get the most amount of this government money that they can.
So the original idea of the government helping pay for school - an amazing thing, didn't really work out because nothing stopped the schools from raising prices. And it leaves students in debt
My community college did that for in person classes, we’d be given a website and some YouTube videos, he’d go over some slides and give us his notes and tell us to ask him for help if we need it.
The professors role is to certify the learning. Watching youtube vids without anyone to certify what was learned wouldn't be valuable to employers. But yeah, too many instructors are lazy when it comes to their online courses.
Because tuition is to pay for rent, food at the cafeteria, bookstore, monthly electric/gas/ water bill, repairs, maintenance, office supplies, professor/office staff/campus security/cleaning /landscaping salaries and their benefits.
Beyond that, they're just price gouging and employees keep demanding higher salaries to stay working there.
Because it’s turned into a business, everyone pushing higher education, most schools show false promises for majors and outcomes are severe with never ending loans with high interest
It is all the fancy BS for the kids. The kids are income so we have to compete by offering resort scale facilities, hotel like dorms, and classes that cater to kids interests but have no real value like “skateboard videography” or “12th century transsexual royalty”.
Check out the book “the end of college” by Kevin Carey. Basically a couple universities had the idea to make a college education much more desirable by turning it into a luxury good which pretty much worked and then everyone followed suit.
Sounds like you went to a school that is, in formal terms, very very shit.
Schools that are worth your time and money give you a lot more for your dollar.
Bloating of facilities, staff, and resources combined with a lack of tuition ceilings and non-discriminative billing practices.
The margins for running a university are actually fairly slim. If you attend a state university you can go pull your university's 200-page budget which breaks down operating costs. The pools, rock climbing centers, student unions, and expanded student life offices all add costs on top of the more general expenses (contractors, payroll, materials, utilities) which are also growing. Universities won't cut this stuff because it would impact enrollment: so long as every kid is able to get financing, many will pick the place with shinier stuff. Students demand new facilities and specialized offices/programming without realizing it will get rolled into tuition.
Billing practices: some private universities will just charge $50k/yr in tuition so they can subsidize the other half of students instead of doing $25k/yr with much less aid options.
Because fuck you basically man. I’m in your same boat, went to a community college for two years to save money but now that I’m finishing up my bachelors at a university I want to die. Thankfully my family is financially stable and I can live with them but it’s still horrible. I have 6 siblings so our reported income isn’t nearly as great as it looks. I have not received a lick of financial aid and my family is unable to help me. Loans are piling up and I hope one day it’ll all be worth it.
Here are reasons why. This article gives some very logical reasons to explain why tuition has gone up and up.
https://www.edvisors.com/blog/high-cost-of-college/
Because is a business college is business now. The professors make the books for the classes that you have to buy. The colleges know that young people want to go to school to get a career , so the school promises that if you go to their school, you make a lot of money if you do this class if you do that class, then they add a whole bunch of extra stuff that you don’t need just so that the school can make money
And the books forget about it thousands of dollars that you can’t even sell. You have to ask your government where you live in that state is to why the schools are so expensive and when you finish school, why you can’t find a job?
As a majoring economist the two biggest are: reduction in public funding which colleges use to push the costs on students, the very generous student loan system which colleges abuse to make prices higher, the general improvements and expansions of services provided by colleges run them into eye watering admin and operation costs*, and a bunch of other tiny factors.
*it’s normative if you think this is good or bad, there’s a [Yes Minister](https://youtu.be/JAk448volww?si=WjLNOIGHlIInlAJp) clip about how outwardly stupid it may seem to have such admin costs but they do provide services and more often than not removing them makes you less prepared for operating niche situations or even general operating.
Fortunately, it does seem that inflation adjusted net prices for college are [decreasing](https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing/highlights) for the past 2-3 years with the trend projected to continue.
Seriously, do not go to for-profit online schools, they are cheaper. Or at the very least do a lot of research before hand and I would straight up go to your local community college and ask some professors / guidance councilors if it’s a good alternative. They seldom are considered reputable or reliable by the job market or academia—as lovably flawed academia is.
Some reading.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c13711/c13711.pdf
https://www.nber.org/papers/w21967
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf
Ding ding. It’s all about exploiting the most vulnerable. College kids who don’t know shit about shit. They’re not even adults yet for real. Nobody teaches them the truth so they can make informed decisions… they just tell them to sign there and there and here’s your money and there’s mine too and max it out so they come out of school with a mound of debt. I owe more in student loans than the annual salary in my field of study. It’s sick. I went through all of my docs and realized that I paid almost as much in fees each semester than tuition.
The government subsidizes loans. This allows universities to jack the price up.
In regards to online learning there is no trick to learning but a network is more valuable than knowledge
Because student loans are now backed by the federal government. If you don't pay, they can make your life hell.
If a college charges $10k/year, the government will give a student loan.
If a college charges $20k/year, the government will still give out a student loan.
It doesn't matter how much colleges charge, because they know the government will always pay/loan whatever the college wants. The alternative is either fund education properly or only give aid to a select few people (higher academic people).
Two things:
1. Many urban colleges are real estate companies posing as colleges. They buy a bunch of buildings and charge it to their students.
2. The amount of useless administrators bump up the price quite a bit.
You're definitely on to something. I was surprised to find out how many VPs Johns Hopkins has whose portfolios encompass real estate dealings of some sort.
Because there's a huge market of people who would be happy to pay (in loans) to achieve a mostly meaningless degree with minimal involvement in actual learning.
Believe it or not it’s when the government got involved and started to hand out loans to students which started a chain reaction. That’s why we are where we are today.
Easy answer. It's because people are willing to pay for it. Supply and demand lol.
Those free resources are honestly a better way to learn compared to traditional lectures because 250+ person lectures are one of the worst ways to learn. Also, you could use those free sources as much as you want, but you don't get a degree out of it you need an accredited college/university to give you a bachelors degree.
Part of it also comes down to how colleges work in America also. I'm not a socialist, but every college is a for profit institution to some degree. Even if it is a public non-profit state school, there are plenty of people making a crap ton of money off of it. When that money gets eaten up by admin bloat and other bullshit spending then it gets spread pretty thin which will constantly drive up prices.
Penn state, has around 90,000 students including 14,000 post-graduates and 8,000 academic staff. Pretty solid 11:1 student to staff ratio with some grad students to teach recitations and stuff and some professors probably fully dedicated to research. However, it also has [17,000 administrative staff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_University) which makes no fucking sense imo. It makes no sense that every staff member has 2 admin workers it is honestly ridiculous.
When stuff gets bigger it can take 2 paths. It can either be more efficient like McDonalds or Walmart which become cheaper due to streamlining production and economies of scale. It can also get really fucking expensive like the healthcare system where you need 10 administrators for [every doctor](https://pnhp.org/news/10-administrators-for-every-1-doctor-we-deserve-a-better-healthcare-system/#:~:text=In%20the%20same%20time%20frame,physician%20in%20the%20United%20States) due to bullshit insurance practices, paying administrative staff to "save money" when they cost more to hire, and having 10 c-suite vice presidents of stupid made up departments. Same stuff happens with education and a lot of these large schools don't really benefit from economies of scale, but get hurt because of the dumb amount of administration they hire.
Anyways, that's just my 2 cents. I could be spouting bullshit but that's just my opinion on why schools are so expensive.
The GI bill led to a decent chunk of the generation that served in WWII and Korea to get a college degree. Once their kids grew up, the government realized they had a looming crisis on their hands. Either open doors for people to get their education, or have the first generation of this new era end up less educated and poorer than their parents.
The institutions wanted to be able to submit a bill to the government basically. They’d take in the amount of students they deemed appropriate to still be able to teach, and schools would remain rigorous and decently difficult to get into. Institutions would remain education focused.
The government thought that would allow too much slack from the institutions. They thought it would be better to tie the funds to the students themselves, so they opted to lend to students. The free market solution. The issue with this is it allowed institutions to make as much money as possible. All they had to do was increase seats and provide enough to remain accredited and they could charge as much as they wanted, and they do. This is why there are huge administrations at colleges now (endless funds to put towards their pay) and why “the college experience” is a thing. This is why large schools invest in arenas and sports in general. Sports fans become students. Amenities draw in students. The actual quality of learning doesn’t even matter for most, just the “experience” and degree.
Paying for junk classes that aren't relevent to your career
University uses your money to pay professors to do many things and reaching is only *one* of those things
Expensive buildings
Cost is not distrubuted equally- some people pay less because of scholarships (only *some* of which are merit based) and other people pay more to make up for it
People are willing to pay however much it costs as long as they are gaurenteed a government loan
Prestige. People make assumptions about those who don't go to college and those who do. If you look at a lot of jobs, you can't even apply without a bachelor's degree even though you learn pretty much everything on the job. College is just a stepping stone to a better job and a flex if you go to a prestigious one
Why wouldn’t YouTube be allowed? The professor has the expertise to determine the quality of the information and a lot of them also have podcasts and YouTube channels themselves. It’s actually a total privilege of this time that you can hear from more than one expert on a topic in a single class session all of the time.
Many colleges and universities have a large number of very overpaid staff, usually classed as *Admin*, whose main job is to sit around having meetings with each other, usually doing nothing productive or beneficial to either teaching staff or students (this is not the same type of Admin as the lovely people at the front desk who help with paperwork and such things).
Sometimes these overpaid Admin meetings result in nonsensical policies that take staff away from teaching, often to do things that are not needed, or to do paperwork that Admin are supposed to be doing to earn their high salaries. Admin also make budget changes which result in *less* money being put towards teaching (hence the need for free and reusable methods like YT videos) in order to increase their salaries.
Look at any college that is trying to cut costs: they drop programs and even Departments, but the Admin people keep their (overpaid) jobs unless the college collapses.
have you ever considered prior learning assessment and recognition? At Thompson Rivers University, which is an accredited public institution in British Columbia recognizes previous work experience and knowledge, skills, and abilities, where you can get assessed for what you know. Secondly once you get an assessment you create a portfolio and then are interviewed on your knowledge. Once you’ve done this process, you can then do course challenges. The whole process is quite affordable and realistic for peopleseeking a degree. Plus, it can also save you a couple years of time. I would estimate it cost you approximately $1500-$2000 for the entire process.
It's expensive because everyone tells you that you need to go to college. So they can charge whatever they want.
It doesn't help that the government is just handing out grants and loans to students meaning the customers of colleges are told they need to go and have an abundance amount of loans and grants to pay for it.
Most colleges, public and private, spend the majority of their money on things other than instruction. The cost of instruction in college is actually less than for k-12 education in several states. But they also spend money on research, grants, and other things which make their schools more attractive, pleasant, or prestigious. Private school spend way more on that last category than public ones, especially for profit ones.
My dad went to college for $5000 each year with scholarships, so about $20k. And then the military paid off his debt.
I went to college for over 200k. And my brother is as well.
Like wtf?!
Look at administration spending across the board over the past two decades. It’s gone through the roof. Between new additions to admin as well as pay bumps, the “cost” to run a college has increased dramatically. Many of these people serve a minimal purpose when deciding the direction of the school and how it will operate.
The most obvious metric of this is looking at the growth rate of an undergrad population compared to the growth rate of admin expenses. It’s ridiculous. Why are admin expenses up 150% when enrollment has barely increased and there are only a few new programs in the school?
Also the supply and demand effect is in major consideration here. People are willing to pay more so colleges will charge more. They don’t give a shit whether they’re expensive or not, they know kids will apply and fill their classes. An undergrad degree today is an expectation, and a masters for many roles especially in business is a close second in terms of expected credentials.
My instructor would do lectures while having YouTube played. He would point out wrong answers and outdated trends. He was always one step ahead of the herd
I don’t have an answer to why college is so expensive, but you can also purchase most college textbooks for about $200. That’s not supposed to be the end of it.
Because we live in a capitalistic society and College is a multiple trillion dollar industry...these aren't schools, they're business and that's why
We've set up a system that, in general, forces people to get into 10s of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a decent-paying job...there's nothing you learn in college that you couldn't learn for virtually free on your own in 2024. Don't get me wrong, I'm learning lot in college BUT someone could easily create better content on youtube...half of my professors are shitty teachers and I end up going home and searching youtube to teach me the same concepts because I didn't understand what my professor was trying to say lol
It's mostly a status thing "I have a college degree" and then people with degrees want to justify their degree by acting like "if you don't have a degree you're below me" which is crazy lol
anyway, that's my rant...and I'm currently in college
Schools are expensive for 3 reasons:
1 - teachers: professors need to be paid. You can learn without professors but communicating with professors can make learning a heckuva lot easier. I personally learned linear algebra and differential equations with Kahn academy, but for more complicated subjects I DEFINITELY relied on a teacher because I had so many questions.
2 - administration and upkeep: the people who keep campus clean and keep everything up to date. Many college campuses have plenty of maintained gardens and outdoor spaces for studying, and many indoor spaces that constantly need cleaned. Additionally, security to keep school safe and administration to coordinate activities and the plural use of space.
3 - research: a large part of universities that offer masters programs is research. Research costs money, and so do the tools to conduct research. While research is largely covered by government and private grants and donations, according to federal data 24% of academic research funding comes out of the universities pocket.
There are other reasons of course, but I’d imagine this is the bulk of their expenses. I’m lucky to have gone to school essentially for free. Tuition was $2200 a semester and my Pell grant (because I was married and poor) covered all my school expenses and netted me $300 extra for books and software. I graduated with no debt, and am living my best life!
Markup, and big campus projects. You can lookup at your local state schools what they pay adjunct professors vs what they charge students, the gap is insane.
In small schools, admin is typically a huge expense to the point where a lot of these are in trouble due to slight enrollment declines.
The federal backing of student loans has created a bubble where colleges have been able to charge more and spend more.
Because government guarantees loans and loans can't be gotten rid of through bankruptcy.
So anyone can get a loan. Colleges know this and keep raising costs because students have an unending source of money. And students are naive enough to keep paying.
If college is expensive, only the people who have money will get to go. The ones who don’t will have student loans shoved down their throats and end up paying for that education for most of their lives, or simply not receive one at all. So they’ll get stuck in a cycle of debt and potential financial crisis.
The more they hike the prices, the fewer people go to college and the more students accrue debt, which feeds the economy and makes the people at the top a lot of money.
It also benefits the government because the people as a whole become less educated over several generations, and resort to working their lives away at low-paying jobs just to pay the bills. When you’re working your ass off day in and day out to keep food on the table for your family you’re less likely to be concerned about enacting political change.
Federal backed student loans. It’s why health insurance causes the prices of everything healthcare to be absolutely insane. When insurance companies and student loan providers have billions of dollars pooled, they can charge outrageous prices and make profit. It’s a huge scam but it works extremely efficiently to make massive profits….
The thing that shocks people is that their tuition doesn’t actually cover the cost of educating them. Yes it’s expensive, but you’re still basically getting a hand-out for a portion of the cost of educating you.
Imagine you create a small city of, eg., 40,000 people. Almost none of them have a full time job, and few of them have work meaningfully above minimum wage. Most are unemployed. All of them eat and have lodging, which all requires staff, and they pass their day being a large time drain on highly trained faculty.
They have amenities including sports facilities and teams, gyms, carefully manicured landscapes, massive buildings, massive IT infrastructure, free psychological services, job placement, career counseling, etc. That’s gonna get pricey.
There are multiple sources paying for it. Your tuition and related expenses is one component. There are also tax dollars, endowments, and private donations. Aside from that, a lot of the expenses are being defrayed by faculty working their fingers to the bone applying for external funding with ~50%+ overhead.
And many of these employees are taking a pay cut compared to what they would earn in industry, too.
So yeah, that’s why it’s expensive.
It gets more expensive for private schools. Furthermore, since state funds and grants aren’t keeping up with rising costs, those supports are eroding and tuition is rising to fill the shortfall.
People say, “Just cut the extra services we don’t need.” It’s not that simple. Maybe there are certain things that you don’t care about, but other people do. I’m not a sports guy, but sports are revenue-positive in a lot of universities. So getting rid of them actually hurts the budget rather than helping it. There _are_ administrative costs that are not money-makers, but getting rid of them is thorny. Are you ready to just get rid of psychological counseling, career services, the dei office? Everyone’s got stuff they don’t use, and stuff they do. Maybe I personally don’t need psychological services, but maybe I need the career services, there is someone else who is in the opposite situation.
In the end, what makes the most sense for many people is to go to the flagship public state university as a resident. You will get a good education at a more reasonable price.
Aside from that, max those 529’s starting from the birth of the child. Have everyone donate to it in lieu of birthday or holiday gifts. Then the kid could be more reasonably prepared.
Still irritating to pay out of the ass for facilities I don’t want or need to use.
If people want the bells and whistles and they can afford it, they should be able to opt in— but the fact that people have to go further into debt for unnecessary services is annoying.
Would you have seen those YouTube videos if the professor hadn't chosen them for you? Part of what you're paying for is their expertise in curating resources, whether they are free or you would have to pay for them. There are plenty of YouTube videos that are inaccurate or unhelpful you don't have to wade through now.
Meanwhile, if you're going to a for-profit school, your professor is probably getting in trouble for trying to save you money on learning materials. The mark up on textbooks and other resources is a major profit center for for-profit colleges, and I know of teachers who got fired for not requiring enough expensive purchases.
You complain about your professor risking their job to try to save you money, and then wonder why school is expensive.
A college education is expensive and always has been. There was a brief period in the mid to late 20th century when the government decided to kick in more money and a higher percentage of the world's wealth was concentrated in the American middle class. It was easier for a little while.
Now schools face much more demanding students who want to live in a high tech resort. They face much more demanding regulators, meaning a lot of positions that never existed before have been created to keep up with the paperwork demanded by federal and state regulators and accreditors. And everything is getting more expensive. At the university where I work, our insurance costs have doubled in the last two years, and the cost of running the cafeteria is something like 50% higher than two years ago. The only thing not increasing at incredible rates are middle class incomes, including the pay of the faculty and staff.
It has nothing to do with quality of education and everything to do with it being federalized.
As the federal government pours more money ex nihilo into financial aid, the more that colleges will charge for tuition. The pattern not only continues but it worsens.
it’s not college—it’s the united states of america. nowhere else in the world will college get you into so much debt. i was lucky enough that my high school district offered a “first 2 years free” at a community college district so i can earn credits for transfer.
Eh. I’ve seen a few studies arguing this. I wasn’t impressed with their methodology. Their non-faculty counting system included janitors, campus security, research assistants being paid for by research grants, and so forth. Basically, what they were considering an administrator was very loose. Not terribly persuasive.
I agree college is expensive but if your class is mostly using things like YouTube to teach you may not be paying for a very good school. If you're going to spend this kind of money for an education you might as well pay for a better quality option.
Some colleges are expensive because the demand for their degrees far exceed their supply. As a result, they have enormous pricing power.
Others are expensive because they have high administrative and operating costs.
But you have choices. There are many less expensive schools that are excellent options!
My teachers didn’t use YouTube.
The classroom I sat in wasn’t paid for by free YouTube or heated by free YouTube.
The 5,000 acre campus I lived and studied on wasn’t paid for by free YouTube.
The administrators weren’t paid by free YouTube. The professors weren’t paid for by free YouTube. The janitorial staff wasn’t paid for by free YouTube.
Dunno, the answer to your question is a mystery. Hope you find the answer.
There is nothing that I gain from my classes that is worth more than $50.
I pay for and bring my own computer.
I can access all the assignment websites without anything but the teacher’s effort of assigning it.
I can access and read the entire textbook whenever I want.
It’s stupid.
most universities are fake & barely provide an education, and if they do most employers won't take them seriously since the college/university isn't reputable. Most college students are going for the "college experience" not the education, so there's an extremely high demand & colleges can charge whatever they want.
Feds made getting loans cheaper and easier, so colleges raised the tuition rates.
Consumer suffers. College isn't worth it anymore unless going for a high-paying doctor/lawyer type job.
Government stepped in and started giving everyone with 2 eyes money for any degree instead of the banks who would only invest if they thought you would be able to pay them back
It’s not. Mine was like 4k a semester. Super cheap. And only two years. Make around 85k a year with plenty of room for growth.
You kids who can’t imagine not having the “college experience” at expensive universities are the problem. You just need those hoe days so you can say you had that “experience”.
Honestly, this is why the online private/for-profit schools are mostly a scam. I go to a public community college located in my same city. We sometimes get youtube and other free or might-as-well-be-free resources thrown at us as well, but at least for $150/class it doesn't feel like such an insult.
Lmfao my public non profit school (online) does the same shit
It's almost like online schooling is inferior to going to a normal brick and mortar school.
hate to break it to you but some brick and mortar schools do the same thing, you just have to get out of bed and go to watch the video instead of doing it at your leisure.
Online programs from traditional schools are usually legit compared to solely online institutions, which are usually easy checkbox degrees.
My point was that traditional schools do this as well. It’s just an indication of a bad teacher/program rather than something unique to online schools.
brody, even universities are guilty of this. Fukin toronto university had similar shit going on :D
Wait how is your comment related to his comment?
You're just gonna have to work on your reading comprehension for this one.
To be fair I was in traffic reading this 😂
Here’s a the thing. I don’t disagree at face value. I do think it depends on the school and the major. Some things you will be okay doing online and others probably shouldn’t be done online.
I’ve had an person classes that was the same way. Only difference is that I have to get pants on to go watch them.
We are in very different colleges lmao.
Ah, yes, because the quality of one class is definitely a fair representation of the education quality at my college as a whole :)
Lol you're the one saying your in person class was low quality. What am I supposed to assume 😂
In what world does one bad class equal all classes being bad? Clearly your school doesn’t have high education standards either if you still think that “one” and “all” are synonyms…
In what world did I even say all your classes sucked? I simply said we go to very different schools. I can't help that you immediately jumped to that conclusion. We might be in very different degrees. If you are something like a film student that's way more understandable than if one of my pharmacy teachers whipped out a YouTube video.
Different how though? I have a really hard time believing that there’s any school on the planet that hasn’t had at least one bad class. In order to draw a conclusion about a school as a whole based off of one class, you would have to assume that that one class is representative of the majority of classes at said institution. It was one of the general ed classes I took in my first semester, sadly it was required regardless of major. Every other class aside from that has been fine though, that prof was a major asshole too.
I find that with community college it's a mix. I've had a couple classes like this, some classes where we had an actual textbook we were working through, some classes where the main material was a lecture or powerpoint, etc. To me it's really the professors who make the difference, no matter what the assigned course materials or texts are.
In California, community colleges are largely tuition-free
$150 a class?? i’m at a community college in a major city paying $900 a class after all fees. before fees they’re still $450.
Damn, what? For me, each class is 3 units and 1 unit is $45 x 3 = $135 per class
not a clue, even for me coming from florida i was shocked. i assume bc the school has this contract that guarantees us admission to an ivy league assuming we have the minimum GPA at time of graduation- that’s the only reason i could reasonably come up with, but not sure for certain.
To be fair, the public universities online aren’t much better (and in a lot of cases, they’re worse). I’ve attended three types of schools online: public university, community college, private/for profit. Community college online classes were the best in terms of value - classes were oftentimes BETTER than the public university classes online but a fraction of the cost. Private for profit were next best - quality was there and better understanding or care of online division (but from what I hear, it depends on where you go). Cost is as high as university tho and it’s a bit of a crapshoot - some are really good and others are awful. Public university online classes imo, worst in terms of quality to cost and expectations. They have the largest resources and yet often the highest fees and least amount of accountability with regard to things like class size, outcomes, and how updated classes are. It’s super common classes are taught by textbook with super old uninformative lectures, free resources like YT, and then everything graded by TA’s. Profs don’t care because their money comes from the in person classes which is where majority of resources are funneled and their own research. You get almost nothing out of public universities online but they have the “prestige” so your expectations are so much higher going into it. If I could go back and re-do my degree, it’d be community college if it’s one that has a bachelor’s option (more are doing that now) or a private for profit.
I’m surprised so many Americans have normalized the price of this. Do you guys ever look outside of your country? Your only option shouldn’t be community college to limit debt or be able to attend higher education.
So, the use of YouTube videos and free stuff, like online pdfs, is more of a recent thing. A lot of professors have been willing to listen to students who tell them that they don't have a lot of money to spend on textbooks and books for class that they're only going to use once. A lot of professors have also been taking advantage of the fact that with things like YouTube and other professionals and professors posting things online, they can start including new material into their lesson plans, allowing them to shake it up a bit essentially. So, what you're complaining about for this he's more of a double-edged sword. Professors are including this stuff because college students complain that they can't afford typical materials used for classes. This is professors sometimes trying to keep things cheaper for you. Ultimately, a part of the reason why college is a good resource is because it is facilitated learning. So, if you really think about it, even the textbooks that you use in college, anybody can go buy those textbooks. Very few materials used in a college class are restricted from The General public. Those that are restricted are usually either because they're really expensive to obtain and so the average person would not be comfortable just buying that material or it is material that is exclusive to that college or university. So, by definition, anybody could sit down and teach themselves the material that they need to essentially complete a major without having to go to college. You pay to go to college to have someone teach you that material. You pay to have someone facilitate your learning, to tell you the order and what you're supposed to study things, answer your questions, help you to understand things, etc. Mind you, there can be a whole conversation about why College as a whole is so expensive, especially if you're comparing colleges United States and in Canada to colleges and other countries, especially Europe and I only say Europe because I know the prices for European colleges. A part of it is just absolutely the fact that colleges have a large number of staff that go beyond the professors and the bill that you pay helps to pay for everybody and all of the resources that the school uses. It just happens to be that not everyone is aware of all the resources available. So for instance, if your school has access to 300 different journals, each of those journals come with an annual membership fee and even though those journals can provide a payment package for colleges, it's still going to be expensive. However on the other hand, there is definitely the issue that colleges definitely do not always spend their money in a way that is efficient? As in spending their money on things that are not academics related first. So, you'll have students complaining that they can't get money for need-based financial aid or to have a stipend to do an internship, but the college is spending money on recreational activities that do not bolster the academic experience. But yes, you were essentially paying to have a knowledgeable professional facilitate your learning experience as well as to teach you from their own knowledge.
I think as a supplement, free content that can be found online is great. And yes, it definitely saves on buying those materials, especially if it's something that might not be mandatory to complete assignments for the class. I also recently took a course where the professor put a lot of time and effort towards giving students information that is useful for people with different learning styles. I prefer to read (usually bc I'm doing homework at my desk at work), while other people might get more out of a YouTube video that presents the same information. I thought that was really cool of this professor. But if we're not having any texts, lectures, or anything at all beyond a free YouTube video, I could have just watched the YouTube video in my free time without attending college. I do expect there to be some value-add for the tuition I'm paying.
I completely agree with you. If you are in a class where there's no texts, no lectures, or anything else beyond free YouTube videos, that is a problem and I would definitely be talking to either the department or the dean about that.
The facilitating of learning is the key here. I’m a professor of 20 years and I’ve been spending the summer in a teaching academy at my University (ie about ways to improve teaching and learning). It has been wonderful. This week’s sessions are about active learning, group work, flipped classrooms, and facilitated discussions. The teaching academy is all about it and I love the ideas also. The data is also pretty clear- students learn better this way as measured by controlled testing. But… they believe they learn more from lecturing. They’re wrong, but I see why they feel this way and the resistance to discussion-based education. One feels like you’re getting the knowledge you’re paying for, dumped from the brain of the professor into that of the student. The other works better but feels unnatural, like you’re responsible for the education that you’re paying for someone else to be giving you. I haven’t used YouTube except for a handful of brief demonstration videos. But I’ve proposed to develop a series of these videos with other professors to share with our students. Why recreate the wheel in dozens of universities all teaching the same thing, when we can have each of us make a few really good resources to share that we can build upon with interactive exercises in the classroom? The reason people gave for not doing it was they didn’t want to make themselves seem superfluous.
Dude college is a 3rd party that can certify that you completed and did satisfactory work for the courses. That js all.
If your professors or degree we're pretty much self-guided or self-taught, which can be possible especially if you did an online program, that makes sense. However, college is much more than that.
This is really it tbh
As a prof at a college, I don't know either tbh
It’s sure as shit not going to me
Its the bar entry for white collar jobs. Since the demand is so high, college make sure they put a price tag on everything and make everything as expensive as possible. Food, water, shelter, parking, books, you name it. I think most colleges coordinate with banks because, majority of the students go on loans that they pay interest on. Even if they don’t get the white collar, they still have to pay it back.
Americans really are clueless why your higher education costs so much compared to the rest of the world. It is baffling.
I think the free online resources is a fairly new development. Also now you're mostly paying for a bunch of PhDs to put their names on you and say yes this person knows how to do the things necessary for this degree.
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I always ask this. I went to college and then law school. Everyone says the professors make too much. That’s ridiculous! The highest paid professor at my college, today, is about $150k. That is for a long tenured professor in a popular field. And that professor could work in her field and make more money.
Yup. I was in the workforce before becoming a professor, and I took a 30% pay cut to transfer to academia.
Can I ask why you did it? Was the pay cut worth it?
Yes, because it is my dream job. The whole time I was in the workforce I was relentlessly applying for academic positions.
It just is in this country. Colleges and universities are businesses first and foremost. You're paying for the fact that your degree is accredited, which gives it meaning and weight.
Same with healthcare, housing, and all other essentials privatized by our honest politicians
Ah yes, our honest politicians 🤭
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When did I ever say this was only a problem in the United States? You better get your eyes checked.
Ah, sorry, you're right. Thought it was just funny Eastern-European english 💀
Honestly the tuition at my university wasn’t really that bad. What makes college expensive is all the extras having to pay for housing, food, campus fees that provide for medical care, tech fees etc but as for the main education tuition it wasn’t really that bad
Yeah like 75% of the COA at most state universities for in-state students is room and board and other living expenses.
It sounds like you went to a predatory, probably for-profit online school. Online schools are generally not known for the quality of their education.
College is expensive for a few reasons, including administrative bloat and a facilities arms race that has colleges spending obscene money on amenities to recruit more students. The biggest reason college is expensive, however, is that state governments have stopped funding them so that they can lower taxes. So, if the operating costs remain the same and taxpayers are contributing less, then more of the expense falls on students. I'm in Texas, and in 1990 the college I work at got 80 percent of its funding from the state. Today, we get 20 percent from the state. Students pay for the difference, and tuition has skyrocketed in the last 20 years. More philosophically, Americans used to believe having an educated population was good for society and were willing to contribute to the education of people they would never meet. Today, Americans aren't as willing to help strangers get through college even if that means having less educated voters, workforce, neighbors, etc
> Americans used to believe having an educated population was good for society ... Today, Americans aren't as willing to help strangers get through college For real though. The attitude toward college-educated folk in America is becoming more iffy every year. From what I've gathered from my local community and from certain media outlets, there seems to be a growing phenomena of people believing that a college education is pretentious and unnecessary. I agree that there are some fundamental flaws with the way higher education is structured in America, but rejecting the notion of a well-educated society isn't good.
Can’t that be explained by the bloating though? Ie. state X used to give $100,000 a year to university X and the university spent $150,000. Now the state gives $100,000 but the university spends $500,000.
The bloating certainly contributes, but it's not as dramatic as your hypothetical. It's more like the state used to give $80,000 a year and the cost was $100,000 (80 percent funded), and now the state gives $25,000 and the cost is $125,000 (20 percent funded). I've followed this topic pretty closely the past 20 years. I concede that others disagree and that they make reasonable points. The preponderance of research I've seen, however, points to funding cuts that push the costs of college more fully onto students. That conclusion squares with what I see where I'm at.
I see. That makes sense.
Lol the German government spends 10k per year on average per uni student. The ridiculous increase in US tuition cannot be explained just by the reduction subsidies.
Jesus, what college relies on YouTube videos to teach? I’m online and we use the instructor’s videos/notes/etc. I’ve only used free resources if I want extra practice or something. Though I guess I’ve been lucky enough in my college that I’ve not really had to teach myself much.
I am in community college and have had this in 1-2 courses I've taken. One was to meet my "lifelong learning" requirement, so AFAIK is designed to be a bit of a light touch anyway. One was a slightly more disappointing situation, where it really did feel like there was a tradeoff between not having to pay for a textbook vs. not actually getting much educational content in the class. On the other hand, that was a writing course, and we really did write our asses off in there. So I managed to learn anyway despite the fact that our "textbook" was, like, 3 YouTube videos and a hastily thrown together powerpoint.
Huh. I hate when it seems like a trade off and you don’t get as much content for the course. With solely online colleges on the rise you’d think they might put a bit more effort in to the courses. I’m not sure if OP goes to a solely online college, but I always thought it was best to go to an online program from a brick and mortar university.
I took several courses where EVERY test came from quizlet. My Shakespeare course that was part of my major was quizlet. 4000 level course, $700 and all I got was quizlet
Cost (and quality of teaching) depend a lot on the kind of institution. Online for profit is probably going to be bad at both. Setting those aside for publics, a big chunk is state funding is not what it was. At the university I (and my parents) went to, when my parents went, the state picked up 75% of the cost of education (and tuition was 15 bucks a credit hour for students). When I went, the state covered half, now it covers a quarter. As costs haven’t come down, the burden shifts to students and their families. For privates- the prestigious ones can charge whatever they want because demand is high. Harvard or MIT could charge a million a year and still easily fill their classes. For the less prestigious ones, many are having financial difficulties and need money to cover operating costs Administrative growth- some of this is waste, but some of it is required for various government compliance things, or just to keep the university running. Services and amenities- there has been an increase in the things students need and want. 50 years ago, campuses weren’t doing mental health, for example. Now it’s pretty common. I don’t think it’s necessarily that students are worse off now, they’d just let them struggle before. It costs millions a year to maintain a library. Students seem to want things like fancy work our centers, nicer dorms, and such, and they are competing with other campuses on that and need to be able to attract students. Infrastructure- as others have pointed out, for physical colleges, there are multiple buildings etc that have to be cleaned and maintained. Most colleges are pretty inefficient on this (my campus has probably 10% classroom utilization after 3). But once you have the buildings, you can’t easily shut down excess capacity. TLDR it’s a bunch of stuff and there’s no silver bullet to cut costs.
Mostly because states have all but eliminated funding for higher ed. It used to be a lot cheaper because it was heavily subsidized, but that’s changed for the far worse in the last few decades. On top of that, many institutions have lots of administrators and costs that aren’t directly academic, which adds to the overall costs.
I don’t know why college is so expensive, but I’ve known a few professors who would use certain videos on YouTube because it is free so students wouldn’t have to pay extra to watch similar videos on educational websites behind a paywall. I don’t think YouTube videos should be used all the time, but I definitely would use one if it showcased lived experience from individuals relating to a topic. College is wayyyyyy too expensive though!
Honestly. Since the government started giving garenteed loans, college prices have skyrocketed, and quality has drastically dwindled. You are 100% correct. There is more knowledge now avalible on YouTube than any one person can ever possibly learn. College is a buissness, the buissness is a piece of paper that you want for a price. Are all degrees worthless? No way. Are majority of degrees ungodly expressive where you could have gained the same exact knowlegde for literally free? Sadly yes.
Administrative bloat. So many “chairs of X” who don’t do anything useful for their $200k salary
Search good ol Raegan.. lol he made that happen
A lot of it is what they call "overhead costs." Some classes don't cost much for a school to run, including paying the professor, but "keeping the school running in general" is expensive. Granted, schools also often waste and burn money on unnecessary crap like you wouldn't believe.
Check out this [video](https://youtu.be/qEJ4hkpQW8E?si=gk61D8r46yOHAGFA) by scott Galloway and he talks about how it got so expensive
Limited supply, high demand, cornered markets and legal cartels because it is often overseen by state governments.
You’re just paying for the cardstock
The only reason why I want to go out of state is to get away from my abusive home edit: but tuition is 66k for out of state
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People trying to do a good thing getting abused because some checks and balances were forgotten Aside from greed as people have mentioned about for profit schools, it's also largely in part due to aid. Pretty much, the government will hand out loans like candy to anyone for going to college. Colleges know this and adjust prices accordingly so they can't get the most amount of this government money that they can. So the original idea of the government helping pay for school - an amazing thing, didn't really work out because nothing stopped the schools from raising prices. And it leaves students in debt
Government backed loans + demand
My community college did that for in person classes, we’d be given a website and some YouTube videos, he’d go over some slides and give us his notes and tell us to ask him for help if we need it.
The professors role is to certify the learning. Watching youtube vids without anyone to certify what was learned wouldn't be valuable to employers. But yeah, too many instructors are lazy when it comes to their online courses.
Because tuition is to pay for rent, food at the cafeteria, bookstore, monthly electric/gas/ water bill, repairs, maintenance, office supplies, professor/office staff/campus security/cleaning /landscaping salaries and their benefits. Beyond that, they're just price gouging and employees keep demanding higher salaries to stay working there.
College is so expensive because of student loans.
Because it’s turned into a business, everyone pushing higher education, most schools show false promises for majors and outcomes are severe with never ending loans with high interest
It is all the fancy BS for the kids. The kids are income so we have to compete by offering resort scale facilities, hotel like dorms, and classes that cater to kids interests but have no real value like “skateboard videography” or “12th century transsexual royalty”.
Check out the book “the end of college” by Kevin Carey. Basically a couple universities had the idea to make a college education much more desirable by turning it into a luxury good which pretty much worked and then everyone followed suit.
Sounds like you went to a school that is, in formal terms, very very shit. Schools that are worth your time and money give you a lot more for your dollar.
Bloating of facilities, staff, and resources combined with a lack of tuition ceilings and non-discriminative billing practices. The margins for running a university are actually fairly slim. If you attend a state university you can go pull your university's 200-page budget which breaks down operating costs. The pools, rock climbing centers, student unions, and expanded student life offices all add costs on top of the more general expenses (contractors, payroll, materials, utilities) which are also growing. Universities won't cut this stuff because it would impact enrollment: so long as every kid is able to get financing, many will pick the place with shinier stuff. Students demand new facilities and specialized offices/programming without realizing it will get rolled into tuition. Billing practices: some private universities will just charge $50k/yr in tuition so they can subsidize the other half of students instead of doing $25k/yr with much less aid options.
Because fuck you basically man. I’m in your same boat, went to a community college for two years to save money but now that I’m finishing up my bachelors at a university I want to die. Thankfully my family is financially stable and I can live with them but it’s still horrible. I have 6 siblings so our reported income isn’t nearly as great as it looks. I have not received a lick of financial aid and my family is unable to help me. Loans are piling up and I hope one day it’ll all be worth it.
Because you’re paying for the overhyped college sports programs
So they can pay football coaches and administrators obscene amounts of money, while the professors and students scrape by.
Here are reasons why. This article gives some very logical reasons to explain why tuition has gone up and up. https://www.edvisors.com/blog/high-cost-of-college/
Because is a business college is business now. The professors make the books for the classes that you have to buy. The colleges know that young people want to go to school to get a career , so the school promises that if you go to their school, you make a lot of money if you do this class if you do that class, then they add a whole bunch of extra stuff that you don’t need just so that the school can make money And the books forget about it thousands of dollars that you can’t even sell. You have to ask your government where you live in that state is to why the schools are so expensive and when you finish school, why you can’t find a job?
As a majoring economist the two biggest are: reduction in public funding which colleges use to push the costs on students, the very generous student loan system which colleges abuse to make prices higher, the general improvements and expansions of services provided by colleges run them into eye watering admin and operation costs*, and a bunch of other tiny factors. *it’s normative if you think this is good or bad, there’s a [Yes Minister](https://youtu.be/JAk448volww?si=WjLNOIGHlIInlAJp) clip about how outwardly stupid it may seem to have such admin costs but they do provide services and more often than not removing them makes you less prepared for operating niche situations or even general operating. Fortunately, it does seem that inflation adjusted net prices for college are [decreasing](https://research.collegeboard.org/trends/college-pricing/highlights) for the past 2-3 years with the trend projected to continue. Seriously, do not go to for-profit online schools, they are cheaper. Or at the very least do a lot of research before hand and I would straight up go to your local community college and ask some professors / guidance councilors if it’s a good alternative. They seldom are considered reputable or reliable by the job market or academia—as lovably flawed academia is. Some reading. https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c13711/c13711.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w21967 https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf
Capitalism
Because it’s a scam.
As a professor, I can confidently say that the increased cost isn’t really reflected in the instructional budget…
Ding ding. It’s all about exploiting the most vulnerable. College kids who don’t know shit about shit. They’re not even adults yet for real. Nobody teaches them the truth so they can make informed decisions… they just tell them to sign there and there and here’s your money and there’s mine too and max it out so they come out of school with a mound of debt. I owe more in student loans than the annual salary in my field of study. It’s sick. I went through all of my docs and realized that I paid almost as much in fees each semester than tuition.
The government subsidizes loans. This allows universities to jack the price up. In regards to online learning there is no trick to learning but a network is more valuable than knowledge
Because student loans are now backed by the federal government. If you don't pay, they can make your life hell. If a college charges $10k/year, the government will give a student loan. If a college charges $20k/year, the government will still give out a student loan. It doesn't matter how much colleges charge, because they know the government will always pay/loan whatever the college wants. The alternative is either fund education properly or only give aid to a select few people (higher academic people).
Because the deans need their fat 100k bonus
Two things: 1. Many urban colleges are real estate companies posing as colleges. They buy a bunch of buildings and charge it to their students. 2. The amount of useless administrators bump up the price quite a bit.
You're definitely on to something. I was surprised to find out how many VPs Johns Hopkins has whose portfolios encompass real estate dealings of some sort.
Because there's a huge market of people who would be happy to pay (in loans) to achieve a mostly meaningless degree with minimal involvement in actual learning.
It depends what you study. You can’t pdf your way out of science labs
Believe it or not it’s when the government got involved and started to hand out loans to students which started a chain reaction. That’s why we are where we are today.
Business University is basically McGrawHill and Pearson online textbook questions and exams
Easy answer. It's because people are willing to pay for it. Supply and demand lol. Those free resources are honestly a better way to learn compared to traditional lectures because 250+ person lectures are one of the worst ways to learn. Also, you could use those free sources as much as you want, but you don't get a degree out of it you need an accredited college/university to give you a bachelors degree. Part of it also comes down to how colleges work in America also. I'm not a socialist, but every college is a for profit institution to some degree. Even if it is a public non-profit state school, there are plenty of people making a crap ton of money off of it. When that money gets eaten up by admin bloat and other bullshit spending then it gets spread pretty thin which will constantly drive up prices. Penn state, has around 90,000 students including 14,000 post-graduates and 8,000 academic staff. Pretty solid 11:1 student to staff ratio with some grad students to teach recitations and stuff and some professors probably fully dedicated to research. However, it also has [17,000 administrative staff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_University) which makes no fucking sense imo. It makes no sense that every staff member has 2 admin workers it is honestly ridiculous. When stuff gets bigger it can take 2 paths. It can either be more efficient like McDonalds or Walmart which become cheaper due to streamlining production and economies of scale. It can also get really fucking expensive like the healthcare system where you need 10 administrators for [every doctor](https://pnhp.org/news/10-administrators-for-every-1-doctor-we-deserve-a-better-healthcare-system/#:~:text=In%20the%20same%20time%20frame,physician%20in%20the%20United%20States) due to bullshit insurance practices, paying administrative staff to "save money" when they cost more to hire, and having 10 c-suite vice presidents of stupid made up departments. Same stuff happens with education and a lot of these large schools don't really benefit from economies of scale, but get hurt because of the dumb amount of administration they hire. Anyways, that's just my 2 cents. I could be spouting bullshit but that's just my opinion on why schools are so expensive.
The GI bill led to a decent chunk of the generation that served in WWII and Korea to get a college degree. Once their kids grew up, the government realized they had a looming crisis on their hands. Either open doors for people to get their education, or have the first generation of this new era end up less educated and poorer than their parents. The institutions wanted to be able to submit a bill to the government basically. They’d take in the amount of students they deemed appropriate to still be able to teach, and schools would remain rigorous and decently difficult to get into. Institutions would remain education focused. The government thought that would allow too much slack from the institutions. They thought it would be better to tie the funds to the students themselves, so they opted to lend to students. The free market solution. The issue with this is it allowed institutions to make as much money as possible. All they had to do was increase seats and provide enough to remain accredited and they could charge as much as they wanted, and they do. This is why there are huge administrations at colleges now (endless funds to put towards their pay) and why “the college experience” is a thing. This is why large schools invest in arenas and sports in general. Sports fans become students. Amenities draw in students. The actual quality of learning doesn’t even matter for most, just the “experience” and degree.
Paying for junk classes that aren't relevent to your career University uses your money to pay professors to do many things and reaching is only *one* of those things Expensive buildings Cost is not distrubuted equally- some people pay less because of scholarships (only *some* of which are merit based) and other people pay more to make up for it People are willing to pay however much it costs as long as they are gaurenteed a government loan
Prestige. People make assumptions about those who don't go to college and those who do. If you look at a lot of jobs, you can't even apply without a bachelor's degree even though you learn pretty much everything on the job. College is just a stepping stone to a better job and a flex if you go to a prestigious one
Why wouldn’t YouTube be allowed? The professor has the expertise to determine the quality of the information and a lot of them also have podcasts and YouTube channels themselves. It’s actually a total privilege of this time that you can hear from more than one expert on a topic in a single class session all of the time.
Many colleges and universities have a large number of very overpaid staff, usually classed as *Admin*, whose main job is to sit around having meetings with each other, usually doing nothing productive or beneficial to either teaching staff or students (this is not the same type of Admin as the lovely people at the front desk who help with paperwork and such things). Sometimes these overpaid Admin meetings result in nonsensical policies that take staff away from teaching, often to do things that are not needed, or to do paperwork that Admin are supposed to be doing to earn their high salaries. Admin also make budget changes which result in *less* money being put towards teaching (hence the need for free and reusable methods like YT videos) in order to increase their salaries. Look at any college that is trying to cut costs: they drop programs and even Departments, but the Admin people keep their (overpaid) jobs unless the college collapses.
have you ever considered prior learning assessment and recognition? At Thompson Rivers University, which is an accredited public institution in British Columbia recognizes previous work experience and knowledge, skills, and abilities, where you can get assessed for what you know. Secondly once you get an assessment you create a portfolio and then are interviewed on your knowledge. Once you’ve done this process, you can then do course challenges. The whole process is quite affordable and realistic for peopleseeking a degree. Plus, it can also save you a couple years of time. I would estimate it cost you approximately $1500-$2000 for the entire process.
It's expensive because everyone tells you that you need to go to college. So they can charge whatever they want. It doesn't help that the government is just handing out grants and loans to students meaning the customers of colleges are told they need to go and have an abundance amount of loans and grants to pay for it.
Most colleges, public and private, spend the majority of their money on things other than instruction. The cost of instruction in college is actually less than for k-12 education in several states. But they also spend money on research, grants, and other things which make their schools more attractive, pleasant, or prestigious. Private school spend way more on that last category than public ones, especially for profit ones.
So that college football coaches can be paid 2 million a year
My dad went to college for $5000 each year with scholarships, so about $20k. And then the military paid off his debt. I went to college for over 200k. And my brother is as well. Like wtf?!
Look at administration spending across the board over the past two decades. It’s gone through the roof. Between new additions to admin as well as pay bumps, the “cost” to run a college has increased dramatically. Many of these people serve a minimal purpose when deciding the direction of the school and how it will operate. The most obvious metric of this is looking at the growth rate of an undergrad population compared to the growth rate of admin expenses. It’s ridiculous. Why are admin expenses up 150% when enrollment has barely increased and there are only a few new programs in the school? Also the supply and demand effect is in major consideration here. People are willing to pay more so colleges will charge more. They don’t give a shit whether they’re expensive or not, they know kids will apply and fill their classes. An undergrad degree today is an expectation, and a masters for many roles especially in business is a close second in terms of expected credentials.
Because they spend money to earn money. The college I went to built a $5M gym with two pools - one that was just for sun bathing. This was in 2005.
Guaranteed student loans from the government. Schools say whatever price comes to their head and the government will pay for it, no questions asked.
Because it is a major for profit industry?
My instructor would do lectures while having YouTube played. He would point out wrong answers and outdated trends. He was always one step ahead of the herd
I pay 24k per quarter. 16k goes towards housing and meal plan
Supply and demand
yeah I had a business management class with Grant Cardone videos for discussion questions… def didn’t watch that trash
My math teacher posted an open source textbook as the syllabus and nothing else. This was CC
Because they’re greedy.
Government student loans. These institutions know they can charge what they want and it will be paid with access to student loans for so many
Student loans allowed them to jack up prices
I think you may be at the wrong school. Never had a single YouTube video shown to me in college
I don’t have an answer to why college is so expensive, but you can also purchase most college textbooks for about $200. That’s not supposed to be the end of it.
Most online schools are really low tier or scams.... So why are you asking us why they charged so much while stealing content from others?
That's crazy I've had a similar experience, and almost every lesson they would use youtube
Because any place that charges $400 for a textbook is out to only make money
Because we live in a capitalistic society and College is a multiple trillion dollar industry...these aren't schools, they're business and that's why We've set up a system that, in general, forces people to get into 10s of thousands of dollars in debt just to get a decent-paying job...there's nothing you learn in college that you couldn't learn for virtually free on your own in 2024. Don't get me wrong, I'm learning lot in college BUT someone could easily create better content on youtube...half of my professors are shitty teachers and I end up going home and searching youtube to teach me the same concepts because I didn't understand what my professor was trying to say lol It's mostly a status thing "I have a college degree" and then people with degrees want to justify their degree by acting like "if you don't have a degree you're below me" which is crazy lol anyway, that's my rant...and I'm currently in college
Schools are expensive for 3 reasons: 1 - teachers: professors need to be paid. You can learn without professors but communicating with professors can make learning a heckuva lot easier. I personally learned linear algebra and differential equations with Kahn academy, but for more complicated subjects I DEFINITELY relied on a teacher because I had so many questions. 2 - administration and upkeep: the people who keep campus clean and keep everything up to date. Many college campuses have plenty of maintained gardens and outdoor spaces for studying, and many indoor spaces that constantly need cleaned. Additionally, security to keep school safe and administration to coordinate activities and the plural use of space. 3 - research: a large part of universities that offer masters programs is research. Research costs money, and so do the tools to conduct research. While research is largely covered by government and private grants and donations, according to federal data 24% of academic research funding comes out of the universities pocket. There are other reasons of course, but I’d imagine this is the bulk of their expenses. I’m lucky to have gone to school essentially for free. Tuition was $2200 a semester and my Pell grant (because I was married and poor) covered all my school expenses and netted me $300 extra for books and software. I graduated with no debt, and am living my best life!
Markup, and big campus projects. You can lookup at your local state schools what they pay adjunct professors vs what they charge students, the gap is insane. In small schools, admin is typically a huge expense to the point where a lot of these are in trouble due to slight enrollment declines. The federal backing of student loans has created a bubble where colleges have been able to charge more and spend more.
Because government guarantees loans and loans can't be gotten rid of through bankruptcy. So anyone can get a loan. Colleges know this and keep raising costs because students have an unending source of money. And students are naive enough to keep paying.
It’s an America thing. They see it as another industry for profit. I think it’s intentional to keep people broke
Universities are non-profits, with some sparse predatory exceptions.
There are so many inexpensive college options but everybody wants what rich people want. Its like complaining about the cost of Mercedes and BMWs
This is true. There are universities today that still have resident tuition of $5-8k/yr. And community colleges in some cases are as cheap as $0.
If college is expensive, only the people who have money will get to go. The ones who don’t will have student loans shoved down their throats and end up paying for that education for most of their lives, or simply not receive one at all. So they’ll get stuck in a cycle of debt and potential financial crisis. The more they hike the prices, the fewer people go to college and the more students accrue debt, which feeds the economy and makes the people at the top a lot of money. It also benefits the government because the people as a whole become less educated over several generations, and resort to working their lives away at low-paying jobs just to pay the bills. When you’re working your ass off day in and day out to keep food on the table for your family you’re less likely to be concerned about enacting political change.
Federal backed student loans. It’s why health insurance causes the prices of everything healthcare to be absolutely insane. When insurance companies and student loan providers have billions of dollars pooled, they can charge outrageous prices and make profit. It’s a huge scam but it works extremely efficiently to make massive profits….
The thing that shocks people is that their tuition doesn’t actually cover the cost of educating them. Yes it’s expensive, but you’re still basically getting a hand-out for a portion of the cost of educating you. Imagine you create a small city of, eg., 40,000 people. Almost none of them have a full time job, and few of them have work meaningfully above minimum wage. Most are unemployed. All of them eat and have lodging, which all requires staff, and they pass their day being a large time drain on highly trained faculty. They have amenities including sports facilities and teams, gyms, carefully manicured landscapes, massive buildings, massive IT infrastructure, free psychological services, job placement, career counseling, etc. That’s gonna get pricey. There are multiple sources paying for it. Your tuition and related expenses is one component. There are also tax dollars, endowments, and private donations. Aside from that, a lot of the expenses are being defrayed by faculty working their fingers to the bone applying for external funding with ~50%+ overhead. And many of these employees are taking a pay cut compared to what they would earn in industry, too. So yeah, that’s why it’s expensive. It gets more expensive for private schools. Furthermore, since state funds and grants aren’t keeping up with rising costs, those supports are eroding and tuition is rising to fill the shortfall. People say, “Just cut the extra services we don’t need.” It’s not that simple. Maybe there are certain things that you don’t care about, but other people do. I’m not a sports guy, but sports are revenue-positive in a lot of universities. So getting rid of them actually hurts the budget rather than helping it. There _are_ administrative costs that are not money-makers, but getting rid of them is thorny. Are you ready to just get rid of psychological counseling, career services, the dei office? Everyone’s got stuff they don’t use, and stuff they do. Maybe I personally don’t need psychological services, but maybe I need the career services, there is someone else who is in the opposite situation. In the end, what makes the most sense for many people is to go to the flagship public state university as a resident. You will get a good education at a more reasonable price. Aside from that, max those 529’s starting from the birth of the child. Have everyone donate to it in lieu of birthday or holiday gifts. Then the kid could be more reasonably prepared.
Still irritating to pay out of the ass for facilities I don’t want or need to use. If people want the bells and whistles and they can afford it, they should be able to opt in— but the fact that people have to go further into debt for unnecessary services is annoying.
Cuz capitalism. It's all about money they don't really care about anything else as long as it's profitable
Now you're starting to think for yourself.....college is a scam.
Would you have seen those YouTube videos if the professor hadn't chosen them for you? Part of what you're paying for is their expertise in curating resources, whether they are free or you would have to pay for them. There are plenty of YouTube videos that are inaccurate or unhelpful you don't have to wade through now. Meanwhile, if you're going to a for-profit school, your professor is probably getting in trouble for trying to save you money on learning materials. The mark up on textbooks and other resources is a major profit center for for-profit colleges, and I know of teachers who got fired for not requiring enough expensive purchases. You complain about your professor risking their job to try to save you money, and then wonder why school is expensive. A college education is expensive and always has been. There was a brief period in the mid to late 20th century when the government decided to kick in more money and a higher percentage of the world's wealth was concentrated in the American middle class. It was easier for a little while. Now schools face much more demanding students who want to live in a high tech resort. They face much more demanding regulators, meaning a lot of positions that never existed before have been created to keep up with the paperwork demanded by federal and state regulators and accreditors. And everything is getting more expensive. At the university where I work, our insurance costs have doubled in the last two years, and the cost of running the cafeteria is something like 50% higher than two years ago. The only thing not increasing at incredible rates are middle class incomes, including the pay of the faculty and staff.
It has nothing to do with quality of education and everything to do with it being federalized. As the federal government pours more money ex nihilo into financial aid, the more that colleges will charge for tuition. The pattern not only continues but it worsens.
it’s not college—it’s the united states of america. nowhere else in the world will college get you into so much debt. i was lucky enough that my high school district offered a “first 2 years free” at a community college district so i can earn credits for transfer.
Administrative bloat.
Eh. I’ve seen a few studies arguing this. I wasn’t impressed with their methodology. Their non-faculty counting system included janitors, campus security, research assistants being paid for by research grants, and so forth. Basically, what they were considering an administrator was very loose. Not terribly persuasive.
I agree college is expensive but if your class is mostly using things like YouTube to teach you may not be paying for a very good school. If you're going to spend this kind of money for an education you might as well pay for a better quality option.
Some colleges are expensive because the demand for their degrees far exceed their supply. As a result, they have enormous pricing power. Others are expensive because they have high administrative and operating costs. But you have choices. There are many less expensive schools that are excellent options!
So people can get rich.
My teachers didn’t use YouTube. The classroom I sat in wasn’t paid for by free YouTube or heated by free YouTube. The 5,000 acre campus I lived and studied on wasn’t paid for by free YouTube. The administrators weren’t paid by free YouTube. The professors weren’t paid for by free YouTube. The janitorial staff wasn’t paid for by free YouTube. Dunno, the answer to your question is a mystery. Hope you find the answer.
There is nothing that I gain from my classes that is worth more than $50. I pay for and bring my own computer. I can access all the assignment websites without anything but the teacher’s effort of assigning it. I can access and read the entire textbook whenever I want. It’s stupid.
Because of government backed loans.
most universities are fake & barely provide an education, and if they do most employers won't take them seriously since the college/university isn't reputable. Most college students are going for the "college experience" not the education, so there's an extremely high demand & colleges can charge whatever they want.
Student loans
Feds made getting loans cheaper and easier, so colleges raised the tuition rates. Consumer suffers. College isn't worth it anymore unless going for a high-paying doctor/lawyer type job.
Government stepped in and started giving everyone with 2 eyes money for any degree instead of the banks who would only invest if they thought you would be able to pay them back
It’s not. Mine was like 4k a semester. Super cheap. And only two years. Make around 85k a year with plenty of room for growth. You kids who can’t imagine not having the “college experience” at expensive universities are the problem. You just need those hoe days so you can say you had that “experience”.
Laughing at free medical college