OT: TB12's agent Donald Yee Blasts NCAA For Economic and Racial Discrimination

[upstater1]

Well, I agree in some sense, but you're also operating under an assumption that there's some pure, optimal market which isn't built on the exact kind of practices you're describing, which isn't really true except in the minds of classical liberal theorists.

The ethics question is a wider one, though, and an interesting one, since it seems to be related to amenities in general, of which athletics are merely part. Students are shelling out more fees and tuition money to fund athletics and many other amenities - student centers, gyms, food courts, etc. - which ultimately have little to nothing to do with academics and everything to do with lifestyle. The "amenities race" is one of the more absurd side-effects of increased privatization. And along with it comes administrators specifically for those amenities, who are inevitably paid substantially more than some of your academic foot soldiers like adjunct professors and graduate students.

The pure market I'm talking about is pretty simple. The sport goes pro. It competes either as a minor league for the majors, or else it affiliates with universities, or else it is totally independent and it fights for dollars against Major League Lacrosse and the like.

I agree about the amenities part, but the truth is that every school has a totally separate budget for room & board and the like. The cost of those amenities is a separate budget item from the educational part. AND, you pay for it separately as well. Off-campus students don't pay for any of it except of course the fee part (athletics, etc.) and they subsidize the food part if they choose to eat there (higher price per meal for non-plan students). The costs of amenities are not rolled into tuition. They are separate: extra fees and/or room + board.

 

[primetime]

The pure market I'm talking about is pretty simple. The sport goes pro. It competes either as a minor league for the majors, or else it affiliates with universities, or else it is totally independent and it fights for dollars against Major League Lacrosse and the like.

I agree about the amenities part, but the truth is that every school has a totally separate budget for room & board and the like. The cost of those amenities is a separate budget item from the educational part. AND, you pay for it separately as well. Off-campus students don't pay for any of it except of course the fee part (athletics, etc.) and they subsidize the food part if they choose to eat there (higher price per meal for non-plan students). The costs of amenities are not rolled into tuition. They are separate: extra fees and/or room + board.

Yeah, my understanding is that the rising cost of college attendance is largely explained on one hand by bloated administrative budgets and on the other by a heavy decline in state aid. Rising tuition and fees both play a role in this. As you noted, I don't think athletics are the primary driver in most instances, but I largely agree with you on how a "fix" for this would work - decouple the two.

 

[upstater1]

Here's how crazy this college sports world is:

The federal gov't passed a law a decade ago requiring schools to post incidental costs along with their normal tuition, room & board, fees & books costs. Schools used to always post these 3 things on their website. The gov't required incidentals. These incidentals included things like coins for laundry, cell phones, travel to and from school.

Last year, when the schools decided that they would pay athletes a stipend over and above tuition, R & B, fees & books, the D1 schools decided to pay only the amount of incidentals posted officially (under federal regulation) on their websites. This was done mainly to avoid having the stipend count as compensation for work (which would mean it would be taxed). So officially the $4-5k that athletes receive is not considered pay, since this is a federally recognized expense (and thus remuneration) for attending college.

Guess what happened? The incidental costs skyrocketed on college websites from $1k to $4k-5k. This wasn't because it suddenly became more expensive to travel to school or to do your laundry. It happened because the schools wanted to compete with one another to lure athletes.

Remember, the players already have all their fees and books paid for, all their food and utilities, they also get a per diem for sports/game days and travel. So the entire costs of education for them is travel to/and from campus during dead periods or the offseason, plus laundry costs, plus cell phones.

I don't think $5k is necessary for these things, do you?

But the truly awkward part of this is that we assume schools are trying to hide the profits from college sports. Whereas I assume they are more than likely trying to hide the subsidies from their #1 customers: the parents. When the parents realize they are shelling out all this extra $$ for such subsidies, they are rightly upset. Even worse, when a student is taking on additional student loan debt which they'll carry decades into the future, they should be upset.

But here's the weird thing, and it makes me think I'm wrong. The schools have to post the incidental costs for all students. So whereas last year, parents would look up the true cost of college, add tuition to R&B to fees & books, and then incidental costs, the D1 schools decided to jack up the listed or predicted funds needed for attendance well over and above the true or actual need. They were practically dissuading students from attending by showing them a figure a few thousand over what students would actually need to attend. This is the backwards world of college sports.

I know why Presidents fall for such short-sighted approaches, caught between a world of crazed boosters, board members (most often local developers), politicians, and alumni on the one hand, and the federal gov't, the NCAA and parents on the other. We've spawned nothing but idiocy in all this.

 

[borg]

Some states don't subsidize Higher Ed anymore. Louisiana is now totally out of it. 0%. Arizona is almost out. But even up north, you have states reducing tax subsidy as a % of the budget to below 10%.

Look at U. Michigan and PSU. $16k tuition for in-staters, subsidies below 10%.

I just looked through a study as part of my job and one huge thing stuck out in all the analysis. When you see tuition outpacing the rate of inflation, you can't equate tuition with actual expenditures. Expenditures are not outpacing inflation. One example: we looked at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1991, the state subsidy was $16.4k per student, or 50% of the $33k expenditures per student. Tuition was just a hair below $2k. Fast forward to 2011 (which was the last year of the study's 20 year analysis) and California had reduced its subsidy to $9.7k. In the meantime, tuition skyrocketed to $11.5k (it's at $13k in 2015), but the cost per student was at $40k. So, the news reports and news reporters say, "tuition shot up over 1000% in 20 years, outpacing inflation by an astounding 20-to-1. At this rate, tuition will be $120,000 in 20 years!!!" But the reality is that tuition is skyrocketing while expenditures are keeping pace with inflation.

I recently had a long conversation with a headmaster of an elite boarding school in the southeast, a school with facilities and credentialed faculty that would rival most prep schools in NE, and I asked him why tuition for borders at his school was still $10k-$15k less expensive than in the north east. His answer surprised me......he said it was all about wages. Higher taxes, higher housing costs, and higher costs of living in the north east forced schools to ramp up pay packages to stay competitive.

Talking about college costs, he explained that the competition to attract the best students has set off bidding wars to attract big name professors. For example, Harvard was paying Elizabeth Warren $300K+ to teach one class. Furthermore, competition among universities, has created outrageous spending on "amenities" in order to attract more applicants. Better food, bigger dorms, more high tech, more safe spaces LMAO, more majors, state of the art facilities, etc. No offense to the premise that education is TOO expensive based on the cost of living index increases....but the cost of living index would only be relevant if major universities were offering the same product as 25 years ago....there not. But local community colleges are and that's why their costs have been somewhat contained.

And lets not forget another component that is secretly part of tuition bills.......subsidizing for financial aid recipients. "Need" based grants are at historical highs.....and some of the money comes from tuition. For boarding schools, this strategy is no longer a secret. Accept enough full pay tuitions (often the foreign students) to cover the most desirable scholarship/aid students. For many colleges, the same tactic is applied. Yes, endowments and fund raising also contribute significantly, but Johnny Rich is assisting Peggy Poor. There is one private high school near where I live that has the formula down pat. Basically, handing out dozens of full ride academic scholarships to the best local students in the county....kids that ace their SATs, FCATs, PSATs......and these kids have no problems getting into the best academic universities. Parents who believe that the school created these geniuses flock to this school and are willing to pay a high premium to get little Joey the best education possible. And with the surplus of tuition created by the "payers"....the school then "buys" the best local athletes to win games in the name of the school....sound familiar. The hidden secret behind this formula is that this school essentially operates 3 different programs....gifted, normal, remedial......and you know who is where.

Regarding the "compensation of college athletes" topic...... except for a small handful of major sports schools, the discussion will eventually get reduced to.....do we raise tuition of non athletes to fund the pocket money of athletes. And for lower revenue schools, non athlete tuition is already financing the athletes education.

Anyway...check this story out....it demonstrates what extremes colleges are willing to go to stay competitive. Apparently ...if your school doesn't have a lazy river........

Here's LSU's plan to attract more applicants... LSU's $85M 'lazy river' leisure project rolls on, despite school's budget woes | Fox News

 

[fnordcircle]

Not that I disagree with the sentiment that during your teenage years, you need guidance and probably don't know a heap about the world but, at what age do you consider being "old enough" to make important life decisions?

25.

But emerging science about brain development suggests that most people don't reach full maturity until the age 25.

Brain Maturity Extends Well Beyond Teen Years

 

[primetime]

The competition over applicants is largely due to the idea that a bachelor's degree is an absolute necessity to succeed. This, of course, is false. In Europe, apprenticeships offer an alternative. But there's no real alternative here, and we're still operating under the assumption that the Boomers did, when they took their GI Bills and wandered into the Golden Age of the middle class in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, because of this, everyone has a bachelor's degree, so you have to compete. Schools have been part of this culture and also its beneficiaries, hence huge advertising budgets, the amenities race (athletics included), the rise of predatory for-profit schools, rising tuition, and skyrocketing levels of student debt without much justification.

 

[upstater1]

I recently had a long conversation with a headmaster of an elite boarding school in the southeast, a school with facilities and credentialed faculty that would rival most prep schools in NE, and I asked him why tuition for borders at his school was still $10k-$15k less expensive than in the north east. His answer surprised me......he said it was all about wages. Higher taxes, higher housing costs, and higher costs of living in the north east forced schools to ramp up pay packages to stay competitive.

Talking about college costs, he explained that the competition to attract the best students has set off bidding wars to attract big name professors. For example, Harvard was paying Elizabeth Warren $300K+ to teach one class. Furthermore, competition among universities, has created outrageous spending on "amenities" in order to attract more applicants. Better food, bigger dorms, more high tech, more safe spaces LMAO, more majors, state of the art facilities, etc. No offense to the premise that education is TOO expensive based on the cost of living index increases....but the cost of living index would only be relevant if major universities were offering the same product as 25 years ago....there not. But local community colleges are and that's why their costs have been somewhat contained.

And lets not forget another component that is secretly part of tuition bills.......subsidizing for financial aid recipients. "Need" based grants are at historical highs.....and some of the money comes from tuition. For boarding schools, this strategy is no longer a secret. Accept enough full pay tuitions (often the foreign students) to cover the most desirable scholarship/aid students. For many colleges, the same tactic is applied. Yes, endowments and fund raising also contribute significantly, but Johnny Rich is assisting Peggy Poor. There is one private high school near where I live that has the formula down pat. Basically, handing out dozens of full ride academic scholarships to the best local students in the county....kids that ace their SATs, FCATs, PSATs......and these kids have no problems getting into the best academic universities. Parents who believe that the school created these geniuses flock to this school and are willing to pay a high premium to get little Joey the best education possible. And with the surplus of tuition created by the "payers"....the school then "buys" the best local athletes to win games in the name of the school....sound familiar. The hidden secret behind this formula is that this school essentially operates 3 different programs....gifted, normal, remedial......and you know who is where.

Regarding the "compensation of college athletes" topic...... except for a small handful of major sports schools, the discussion will eventually get reduced to.....do we raise tuition of non athletes to fund the pocket money of athletes. And for lower revenue schools, non athlete tuition is already financing the athletes education.

Anyway...check this story out....it demonstrates what extremes colleges are willing to go to stay competitive. Apparently ...if your school doesn't have a lazy river........

Here's LSU's plan to attract more applicants... LSU's $85M 'lazy river' leisure project rolls on, despite school's budget woes | Fox News

Majors are being slashed all over the place, they are not growing. For instance, when I went to school, many colleges had language departments. They are now a thing of the past. As for Need-Blind policies and subsidizing financial aid, that's only relevant at private schools. Only 16% of schools are private, and of that number, very few have maintained need-blind policies. Most tossed them out a while ago. The very top privates actually give out aid to practically everyone (i.e. the Ivies and the like) but there are indeed a middle ground of mainly northeastern schools that collect tuition and dole it out as aid. Your headmaster may be referring to these schools (i.e. Skidmore, Colgate, etc.) In fact, I'm pretty sure that a wealthy B student can signal to some of these schools (by not filling out a FAFSA) that he is willing to pay full freight, and he will be welcomed gladly. But these are private schools. There are other options.

In one of my earlier posts, I threw cold water on the idea that expenditures are out of control. The facts show that budgets haven't grown fast compared to inflation. Tuition has skyrocketed however since subsidies dropped. Now consider, with all the extra gov't regulations, all the new technology and upgrades (needed) for facilities, all the new administrators, how have they managed to contain costs? Easy: 75%+ of faculty were full-time 15 years ago. Now it is down to less than 25%. Tenured faculty? Around 10-15%. When tenure is down to 5% in the future, people will still be complaining about it, having completely missed the fact that a majority of the teachers are getting paid $2500 for 20 hours of work per week over 17-18 weeks. Faculty pay used to be 70% of the average budget. It is now down to the 50% range. And while Administrative costs have tripled, they've only gone from 1% of the average budget to 3%. So we do have to somehow explain why tuition is skyrocketing by looking elsewhere than administration (note: I'm not an administrator, and can't stand the bureaucracy).

LSU is a totally different world and a different ball of wax. They are selling a country club atmosphere. And why? Because the state is out of the business of higher education. LSU has decided on another course.

 

[upstater1]

The competition over applicants is largely due to the idea that a bachelor's degree is an absolute necessity to succeed. This, of course, is false. In Europe, apprenticeships offer an alternative. But there's no real alternative here, and we're still operating under the assumption that the Boomers did, when they took their GI Bills and wandered into the Golden Age of the middle class in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, because of this, everyone has a bachelor's degree, so you have to compete. Schools have been part of this culture and also its beneficiaries, hence huge advertising budgets, the amenities race (athletics included), the rise of predatory for-profit schools, rising tuition, and skyrocketing levels of student debt without much justification.

But Europe has the same % of students attending university that we do (60-70%) so the apprenticeship culture is only there for the others. The main difference of course is that for the most part, Europeans stay home and go to their local university, which keeps costs down, and everything is heavily subsidized. When I attended the University of Padova (founded in 1200) one year, I used to eat Osso Buco and Spaghetti Bolognese for 50 cents at the dining halls (known as Mensa in Italy).

 

[Zeus]

There has been some thought that the 2008 recession was the death of the liberal arts education and that college will increasingly evolve to vocational training. In this regard, some have suggested that students are taking a much harder look at the cost/benefit of advanced degrees in the humanities. And yet, people I know in higher education say that there are far more applicants for graduate programs in (say) philosophy that there are spots available.

A woman I know is a tenured college professor and a single mother of a 6 year old. It's fair to say that for her, it's a bit of a struggle to make ends meet. She loves teaching, puts her heart and soul into it, but it is far from a lucrative profession.

With the cuts in state funding to higher education, it's getting harder to see how the US can remain competitive in the long haul. Not every state looks at it the same way as Louisiana and Arizona, but I know my alma mater (UNH) has faced draconian budget cuts. One of the ways I know this is because they are more aggressive is seeking funding from alums.

At least Alabama remains true to the values of the residents of the state. Nick Saban has to be the highest paid state employee by a huge margin and that's the way people want it because there's nothing more important than the state university's football team. Roll Tide, even if it means our kids end up working at KFC.

 

[upstater1]

nhere has been some thought that the 2008 recession was the death of the liberal arts education and that college will increasingly evolve to vocational training. In this regard, some have suggested that students are taking a much harder look at the cost/benefit of advanced degrees in the humanities. And yet, people I know in higher education say that there are far more applicants for graduate programs in (say) philosophy that there are spots available.

A woman I know is a tenured college professor and a single mother of a 6 year old. It's fair to say that for her, it's a bit of a struggle to make ends meet. She loves teaching, puts her heart and soul into it, but it is far from a lucrative profession.

With the cuts in state funding to higher education, it's getting harder to see how the US can remain competitive in the long haul. Not every state looks at it the same way as Louisiana and Arizona, but I know my alma mater (UNH) has faced draconian budget cuts. One of the ways I know this is because they are more aggressive is seeking funding from alums.

At least Alabama remains true to the values of the residents of the state. Nick Saban has to be the highest paid state employee by a huge margin and that's the way people want it because there's nothing more important than the state university's football team. Roll Tide, even if it means our kids end up working at KFC.

Everything you say is true. A concern then has to be: world class education for the very rich, subpar for the others. A class society ala Oxford/Cambridge.

I don't think it's vocational though. Only professional. Business, Communications, etc.

Also, as for cost/benefit of the Humanities, some administrators have already royally screwed this one up. Engineering Depts. run in the red. Humanities in the black. Schools that have sought to have more STEM students ended up tanking their budgets. This is why the proposals to cut back on the most cost-efficient fields seem short-sighted in budgetary crunches.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

The competition over applicants is largely due to the idea that a bachelor's degree is an absolute necessity to succeed. This, of course, is false.

It's not false. But it used to be false and should be false again.

Vocational tracks and post-high school trade schools used to be much more highly thought of before the "college uber alles" mindset took hold. We need to go back to that older mindset.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

The "student debt crisis" is largely manufactured hysteria and hype. For recent grads the median debt-at-graduation is around $25,000. Not chicken feed, of course, but given that people somehow manage car loans of that size it's not some "ZOMG! We have to burn the system down!" thing that the media likes to spew at us.

I think we get so much hysteria about it because the mediots are the most likely to be or know people who racked up a lot of debt at some high-priced liberal arts college getting some rather useless degree (or worse yet, an even more expensive and even more useless graduate degree) and then when reality strikes they can't admit they made a lousy choice for themselves.

 

[upstater1]

The "student debt crisis" is largely manufactured hysteria and hype. For recent grads the median debt-at-graduation is around $25,000. Not chicken feed, of course, but given that people somehow manage car loans of that size it's not some "ZOMG! We have to burn the system down!" thing that the media likes to spew at us.

I think we get so much hysteria about it because the mediots are the most likely to be or know people who racked up a lot of debt at some high-priced liberal arts college getting some rather useless degree (or worse yet, an even more expensive and even more useless graduate degree) and then when reality strikes they can't admit they made a lousy choice for themselves.

The student debt crisis is really about for-profit colleges with 75% default rates. Those liberal arts colleges you mention probably have default rates below 5%. There was no student loan crisis until for-profits came around.

And I agree with you that $25k shouldn't kill you for the future. Especially with loan forgiveness plans.

But right now, we're seeing law school students default at huge rates (too many lawyers) but mostly it's just for-profit students taking business classes. One of the biggest such schools, Corinthian, just went belly-up and shut its doors a few months ago. Imagine having given them $40k and now you owe that money. No degree, or if you got a degree, a useless one. When it folded, it had 77,000+ students. Also Everest went belly-up.

When I was in school in the 80s, the max you could take out for a gov't loan was $3,500. Right now the max is $5,500. That's no a very high rate of inflation for a 30 year period (oh my god I am getting old!!!)

 

[unoriginal]

The "student debt crisis" is largely manufactured hysteria and hype. For recent grads the median debt-at-graduation is around $25,000. Not chicken feed, of course, but given that people somehow manage car loans of that size it's not some "ZOMG! We have to burn the system down!" thing that the media likes to spew at us.

I think we get so much hysteria about it because the mediots are the most likely to be or know people who racked up a lot of debt at some high-priced liberal arts college getting some rather useless degree (or worse yet, an even more expensive and even more useless graduate degree) and then when reality strikes they can't admit they made a lousy choice for themselves.

The choice students are encouraged to make is to chose the most competitive program they can get accepted to, and to follow the academic path they are best at. I would argue this is as it should be. Students should be making decisions based on things they could be expected to know, such as (a) how good a student they are and (b) what they are best at studying, instead of what they would be expected to not know much about, such as the job market (which they have had little exposure to) 5-10 years in the future.

When the ancient Greeks went to Delphi seeking knowledge, they were expected to know themselves, and if they knew that the Oracle would help them understand what was to come. When modern Americans go to college, they are expected to know what is to come, and if they know that the professors help them understand themselves.

That many intellectually-gifted people wind up seriously impoverished and under-employed is not so much a failure of principled decision making by students but a serious flaw in our educational system. That system seems to be designed to emphasize those skills society wants and needs to function but that nobody wants to pay for.

 

[upstater1]

The choice students are encouraged to make is to chose the most competitive program they can get accepted to, and to follow the academic path they are best at. I would argue this is as it should be. Students should be making decisions based on things they could be expected to know, such as (a) how good a student they are and (b) what they are best at studying, instead of what they would be expected to not know much about, such as the job market (which they have had little exposure to) 5-10 years in the future.

When the ancient Greeks went to Delphi seeking knowledge, they were expected to know themselves, and if they knew that the Oracle would help them understand what was to come. When modern Americans go to college, they are expected to know what is to come, and if they know that the professors help them understand themselves.

That many intellectually-gifted people wind up seriously impoverished and under-employed is not so much a failure of principled decision making by students but a serious flaw in our educational system. That system seems to be designed to emphasize those skills society wants and needs to function but that nobody wants to pay for.

A multifaceted problem. Corporate America savaged middle management in the 1990s, so the old models of using colleges as a farm went out the window. When I lived in Ann Arbor, MI I had a good look at how a huge arena was used by big companies to interview and hire hundreds and hundreds of students. But those middle management positions were gone, outsourced, automated, now useless.

The flip side is that higher education has degraded. That's an even bigger problem since the students who are now admitted receive a lesser education than their predecessors (who were also admitted under less rigorous processes).

So we have fewer high paying jobs coupled with a lesser skilled and lesser educated workforce.

The problem is that the jobs of the future require a lot more ingenuity and flexibility, which is very different than the job market of the 1980s (middle management) or the 1990s (technology explosion).

 

[QuantumMechanic]

The choice students are encouraged to make is to chose the most competitive program they can get accepted to, and to follow the academic path they are best at. I would argue this is as it should be. Students should be making decisions based on things they could be expected to know, such as (a) how good a student they are and (b) what they are best at studying, instead of what they would be expected to not know much about, such as the job market (which they have had little exposure to) 5-10 years in the future.

Disagree. There's plenty of data to give a pretty good idea of what various fields are paying and what the prospects are in the field. Unless they are independently wealthy they should suck it up and major in a field where they have a decent shot of being able to support themselves (nothing is certain, of course) or be willing to live with the consequences. I have zero sympathy for people who rack up $50,000 or $100,000 of debt getting a M.A. in Medieval Lesbian Mystical Poetry or the like (to take an extreme) and then complain how miserable their life is because they can't get a job they deem college graduates deserve.

One of my friends loves loves loves Early Music. She also knew that almost no one can make a living off Early Music. So she majored in something that she still liked, though not as much -- biology, which is her day job. And that paid and continues to pay the bills so she was eventually able to get a degree in Early Music and join a part-time professional group and play a bunch of gigs every year.

 

[unoriginal]

Disagree. There's plenty of data to give a pretty good idea of what various fields are paying and what the prospects are in the field. Unless they are independently wealthy they should suck it up and major in a field where they have a decent shot of being able to support themselves (nothing is certain, of course) or be willing to live with the consequences. I have zero sympathy for people who rack up $50,000 or $100,000 of debt getting a M.A. in Medieval Lesbian Mystical Poetry or the like (to take an extreme) and then complain how miserable their life is because they can't get a job they deem college graduates deserve.

One of my friends loves loves loves Early Music. She also knew that almost no one can make a living off Early Music. So she majored in something that she still liked, though not as much -- biology, which is her day job. And that paid and continues to pay the bills so she was eventually able to get a degree in Early Music and join a part-time professional group and play a bunch of gigs every year.

Your taking of esoteric extremes such as Early Music and Medieval Lesbian Mystical Poetry doesn't paint an accurate picture. Few students come out of high school with rigorous experience in either. How do they know they'd be good in Early Music? Why would they think society highly values a background in Early Music? I don't think many people are really being misled there.

However many students come out of high school with lots of experience with English Literature and History, which when I was in high school in the early 2000's were considered two of the four Mandatory Four-Year Subjects alongside Math and Science. Students with degrees in those fields should complain about their career prospects when they are spit out by an education system that (a) told them they had talent in those fields, (b) encouraged them to further study those fields, and (c) for a good long while mandated that they study those fields.

There's "data" out there but it is not placed before students in the same grinding, day-in day-out way that school subjects are. In fact I would say such data is more often than not withheld from students.

(Sorry if I sound short but I'm tired.)

 

[upstater1]

Your taking of esoteric extremes such as Early Music and Medieval Lesbian Mystical Poetry doesn't paint an accurate picture. Few students come out of high school with rigorous experience in either. How do they know they'd be good in Early Music? Why would they think society highly values a background in Early Music? I don't think many people are really being misled there.

However many students come out of high school with lots of experience with English Literature and History, which when I was in high school in the early 2000's were considered two of the four Mandatory Four-Year Subjects alongside Math and Science. Students with degrees in those fields should complain about their career prospects when they are spit out by an education system that (a) told them they had talent in those fields, (b) encouraged them to further study those fields, and (c) for a good long while mandated that they study those fields.

There's "data" out there but it is not placed before students in the same grinding, day-in day-out way that school subjects are. In fact I would say such data is more often than not withheld from students.

(Sorry if I sound short but I'm tired.)

The data I've seen shows that English Majors and Philosophy Majors end up making just as much as Business majors by mid-career, but they may actually have gotten an education in the 4 years of college.

 

[upstater1]

By the way, this article popped up on my feed to counter what I've been saying: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/o...RK&kwp_0=87106&kwp_4=455295&kwp_1=255674&_r=0

But weirdly, the author's own stats work against him. He shows that state appropriations for High Ed were at $50B nationwide back in 1975, and my how they've grown to $80B in 2010.

But by using the CPI inflation calculator here (CPI Inflation Calculator) it seems that state subsidies would have had to have grown to $200B to keep pace.

So state aid has grown by less than half the rate of inflation.

The writer makes good points about administration, but I'd still say that we're talking about a tripling of Admin. costs from 1% of averae budgets to 3%, which doesn't explain the enormous rise in tuition.

Given the data this fellow is providing, the numbers reinforce the arguments of the person on NPR that he criticizes in the article.

 

[primetime]

The student debt crisis is really about for-profit colleges with 75% default rates. Those liberal arts colleges you mention probably have default rates below 5%. There was no student loan crisis until for-profits came around.

And I agree with you that $25k shouldn't kill you for the future. Especially with loan forgiveness plans.

But right now, we're seeing law school students default at huge rates (too many lawyers) but mostly it's just for-profit students taking business classes. One of the biggest such schools, Corinthian, just went belly-up and shut its doors a few months ago. Imagine having given them $40k and now you owe that money. No degree, or if you got a degree, a useless one. When it folded, it had 77,000+ students. Also Everest went belly-up.

When I was in school in the 80s, the max you could take out for a gov't loan was $3,500. Right now the max is $5,500. That's no a very high rate of inflation for a 30 year period (oh my god I am getting old!!!)

Yeah, I was about to quote QuantumMechanic's post and write this, but you got it all. Most of the hysteria around the student loan crisis is for-profit schools, which are expensive, have a low completion rate, and are not well-regarded (for legitimate reasons). There's probably some valid arguments against the proliferation of graduate debt because a Masters degree or law degree, and graduate programs are a way for schools to print money, while it's unclear how useful a Masters degree is, or even a law degree from a lower-ranked law school with a huge glut of newly-minted lawyers.