The first college I went to cost about $45k/year. They gave away lots of free t-shirts, bumper stickers, and water bottles. Everyone who lived on campus had cable tv included in their housing cost. Every week they had free events that gave away thousands of dollars in prizes. The environmental club often gave away free LED lightbulbs to anyone who walked through the campus center, and this was when they cost $15/bulb. These lightbulbs were for everyone, not just club members. I am now taking classes at WGU, which doesn’t give away expensive freebies, and only costs $6k/year.
Student loan debt is a huge problem, and forcing people to finance cable tv and coffee cups that they don’t even want is not going to help.
I started college in 1954. The dorms were spartan, there was a phone on each corridor, meals were terrible,…, and tuition was $700. This was a private school, actually an ivy (U. Penna) that got no state subsidy and also did not have a large endowment in those bygone days. I don’t know what room and board cost, since I was a commuter. There were no climbing walls.
Another observation: Around 1998, I had a conversation with the principal (= president) of McGill whose twin brother was president of Princeton. I mentioned that when he and his brother shared stories, their concerns must have been quite different, since McGill was perpetually short of money. He agreed and added that Princeton’s endowment was so large that they could afford to abolish tuition if they chose. Why didn’t they, I asked. Because they wanted a good supply of students who could afford $50K/year since they would likely be good contributors.
I strongly suspect that if universities did away with all the frills, ended their high-priced extra-mural sports (most of which, outside of a couple of major conferences, lose gobs of money with coaches making–in some cases–several million a year) got rid of 3/4 of their administrators, and stopped paying their presidents a million a year (cap the salary at twice that of the lowest paid professor), you ought to be able to run a college on $15,000 ayear tuition. McGill actually makes do on somewhat less. I don’t know what they charge foreign students (for which they get no subsidy), but 20 years ago, it was less than SUNY charged NY State residents (as I learned when I asked a student from Schenectady why he had come to McGill).
Did you learn anything the last time you asked this question? I half-expected this to be one of those spammer threads that re-used the title of an older legitimate thread.
Maybe things have changed, but I got very little free anything from the university proper when I was in school. The only t-shirts I recall getting free were some work-related ones I got as an RA.
We had to pay for long-distance phone service and cable TV. The only free things we got (and they weren’t really “free” anyway) were air conditioning/heating, local phone service and a drop to the dorm LAN and via that, a connection to the internet through the school’s connection.
I don’t recall getting any free coffee cups, water bottles, t-shirts or anything of the kind.
Just my opinion, but I think the real reason for sky-high college tuition is government backed loans.
It’s simple supply and demand: if you pump a bunch of money into a system, but don’t increase the supply of goods and services available, naturally the prices will skyrocket. If the government would butt out of the picture, people would have to scrape up the money to pay for college themselves, and colleges would have to learn to function on the funds that ordinary people can come up with.
I don’t have any proof of this, but it seems like common sense to me.
Stop and think: While you were a student there, how much free stuff did you, personally, receive? Now compare that to the tuition that you, personally, paid. A few tee-shirts and lightbulbs aren’t even remotely close to your tuition cost.
Don’t forget to take into account that the school was paying a lot less for most of these things than if you just walked into a retail store. Internet in the dorms, for instance, only costs them as much as it costs to run the wires through the building: The school is already paying for a fat pipe supplying all of the campus with Internet access.
Let’s not forget Einstein’s Third Law of Relativity, the reason Princeton hired him in the first place:
It appears the only limit to this theory is the imagination of college administrators, as in “I can’t imagine anyone paying this much to attend here”
Would save about $2 bucks. But then they obviously think the advertising is worth more than that.
It’s a *rounding error amount. * de minimus.
Princeton didn’t hire Einstein, the Institute for Advanced Study did. In the early 30s, it is unlikely that Princeton would have hired any Jew. I know Penn hired their first in the late 30s and he had an Italian name.
Well, at least he came back to that thread once or twice.
The answers given there are still valid; the giveaways are tiny part of the cost of college, and the goodwill they generate offsets most of the cost.
IIRC my school tuition bill had a breakdown of sorts regarding costs. One thing was something like “student activities fee”. And IIRC while it wasn’t some very large fraction of the bill, it wasn’t chump change either. And, for the third time, IIRC it payed for things like “free” student concerts, parties, a ski boat for the ski club, and all other kinds of student activities that were subsidized.
And it burnt my ass (well actually just warmed it a bit much). You guys pay for your own fun and I’ll pay for mine thank you very much.
And if you’re marketing yourself as the kind of school that offers a rich and lively all-around college experience, you pretty much have to spend money on things like that, or the prospective students will go somewhere else that does.
If, on the other hand, you’re presenting yourself as an efficient, no-frills way for students to earn a degree or credential, you’re aiming at a different market. Even there, though, it might still be worth it for the college to spend a bit on goodwill gestures. Even some cheap restaurants offer free WiFi and coloring menus for the kids.
Colleges are getting money in the form of loan money, which they then, under the auspices of loan processing companies, distribute to students. If the student defaults, it’s no biggie for the loan bundler or the school. If the school has too many loans in default then they may get less in the future. But the student and/or the taxpayer has to pay, not the lender. The system is being gamed by all who stand to profit from the money. Conservative politicians made sure that the banks profit from this system. Progressives can tell themselves that they’re funding higher education.
There’s a multitude of other factors at play, such as the construction boom on college campuses and the commercialization of education more generally. But the loan system is a major cause. If we were to put schools and lenders on the hook, we would be a little more selective about who gets admitted to school.
Asking the same question over and over is not appropriate.
If you did not like the answer you got last year, you should have moved on to a new message board rather than trying to rehash it here.
Closed.
[ /Moderating ]