Don’t accept more than about 25% of credit toward a degree this way. In other words, you are still probably going to have to do at least two years of classes.
Don’t do this nearly as easily at the upper level. Yeah, you can test out of Chemistry 101 (probably), but just try to test out of Organic Chemistry II 420. There probably isn’t even an exam.
Nearly all the opportunities are at the undergrad level. Most grad programs, IME, don’t let you test out of anything. Even transferring credit from another grad school is usually right out. Back to the beginning, buster, and take Intro to Grad Studies yet again and get re-lectured to on what a peer-reviewed journal is. Yeah, many programs have comprehensive exams, but you can’t test out of the required 15 credits you need to get to comps.
I think the initial focus should be on making sure college is a good value for people because it is not very easy to make it much cheaper. I would do the following:
Find ways to make sure people who start college finish, and finish on time.
Restrict loans to schools with a bad ROI, or that are bad stewards of money.
Charge based on major. An English major should not pay a much as a chemical engineering major.
Standardize entry level courses across universities with cheap textbooks and online resources, and allow those courses to be transferable anywhere. Students should be able to easily take a year or two of course at a cheap school that would transfer without penalty.
Introduce more combined degree programs. For example, it shouldn’t take 7 years of university education to become a lawyer or 6 to get an MBA.
Make sure every HS students has access to courses in HS that would allow them to complete at least 3 semesters worth of college credit. Every capable student should be able to graduate college in 3 years.
Convince states to chip in more money for public education.
Pay good colleges more money to accept more students and expand their brands. In any other field, a superior brand like Harvard or Princeton grows as much as possible. When schools like this accept 5-10% of applicants, rejecting lots of capable people, we have a problem. NYU, Columbia, and other schools are starting to get this, but the trend needs to pick up rapidly.
This I don’t understand. With at least some colleges, accepting lots more students and “expanding their brands” would destroy part of what makes them good (small campus where everyone knows everyone else, personal attention from professors, etc.).
The OP’s suggestions have already been thoroughly demolished, but:
Is the high price of college an issue? Most young people do not have education debt. For those who do, is the average pushed up by those who attended professional schools (e.g. med school)? For those with just undergraduate debt, did they choose to take on that debt over a more economical option?
Some colleges are very expensive. However, the actual price paid is based on the ability to pay, so many students pay very little to attend these expensive schools.
For students with families who can contribute, but who will not, thus prevent students from receiving any financial aid, there are less expensive options. These include transferring from a two-year school to a four-year state school.
Price is a function of supply and demand. What role do government subsidies (grants and loans) play in price?
It is to some done to some extent, but it’s largely a patchwork at this point. There shouldn’t be any reason a chemistry 101 class shouldn’t be available everywhere and online, and transferable to every accredited university. That way, you could create a real market for these courses that might lower costs (and provide flexibility) for students. If you do that, you might see a certification programs that allow the average PhD student to decide to test a handful of students a course in a classroom they rent at night, or an MMOC that allows students to get real credit for the course. Some of this is starting, but there need to be a more consistent effort on this front.
Great, then buy another piece of land and recreate the same process elsewhere. I am not saying a school like Harvey Mudd should become the size of UCLA. I am saying that schools like Harvey Mudd should be incentivized to recreate that success over and over again. Some schools won’t take up the offer, but many schools will. I think most schools don’t do it now because the cost-benefit isn’t there for them, and they generally loathe to think of themselves as a business. But if you want to make college valuable for people, it will necessarily involve more kids graduating from elite schools rather than more for-profit and marginal university graduates.
More importantly, when less than 10% of applicants are getting into a school despite most of them having nearly perfect records and test scores, there is a lot of wasted potential that cascades down to other (worse) universities. It discourages students, makes the costs greater since kids apply to more schools nowadays, and elevates exclusivity above merit. The reality is getting into a given elite school is largely luck for all but the top .001% of students. That shouldn’t be the case. There is no reason Harvard should’t have a LA or DC campus to alleviate some of these issues, or why a valedictorian with superlative tests schools gets rejected from Harvard. It only happens because there is an artificial supply cap that could be addressed by incentivizing and funding growth.
Elite schools aren’t elite any more if they’re just one of many.
That you’re focusing on “perfect records and test scores” tells us you don’t know much about elite schools. Harvard not giving a shit about valedictorians with superlative test scores doesn’t seem like a big problem.
And having two or four Harvards is going to lower tuition costs? Many elite schools with the highest tuition are already subsidizing full-pay students by $30k/year out of their endowment. That $60k tuition/room&board/fees is actually closer to $90k. Maybe we should be expanding the cheaper schools.
No. Elite doesn’t mean exclusive. Their exclusivity isn’t the reason they are elite.
I know plenty about them. Why exactly are you resorting to insults?
It is a problem when elite students can not be matched with elite universities because of an artificially low supply.
Did you even read what I said. The first thing I wrote was:
“I think the initial focus should be on making sure college is a good value for people because it is not very easy to make it much cheaper.”
Why is it either or? Also notice I didn’t say incentivize expensive schools; I said elite schools. Mostly because such schools still represent a good value for people despite them costing more in most cases.
Additionally, what you say is true for basically every school which is part of the reason lowering the cost of college isn’t an easy thing to do given the enormous subsidies involved. Even ignoring the debatable value of a university having a multi-billion dollar endowment, the reality is that the public is better served having more Princeton graduates than more University of Phoenix graduates.
The problem with expanding cheaper schools is that they used to be the public universities that got a lot of state funding. That funding has universally been cut, in some states more than others, so that state schools’ tuitions have gone up a lot. In other words, instead of everyone in the state contributing to the schools through taxes to make college more accessible for everyone, particularly state residents, now the burden is shifting primarily to those actually enrolled.
Some people are fine with that, and some aren’t. I personally think it is better for a state’s (and country’s) economy in the long run to make the state schools more accessible by giving them more state funding, but certainly fiscal conservatives will tend to disagree and may say even state schools should get no funding through taxes. Even if we all agreed that the colleges should get more state funding, that doesn’t solve the problem of states having difficulty balancing budgets in recent years.
I suspect but am too lazy to find citations that a decrease in federal funding to states has also trickled down to mean the states are using money for other priorities, contributing to the lack of money available for state schools.
Some community colleges are also made more affordable through state or county funding, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re having the same problems keeping tuitions down.
Just to tackle this point in a more in depth manner. Colleges like Harvard are not actually spending $90k educating a given student in terms of direct costs. Numbers like this come from from taking money spent and dividing by number enrolled. Those aren’t direct costs, so each additional student doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollar more. Additionally, much of the revenue they get is student dependent, and the endowment is largely from former students. The idea that accepting a more students equals a net loss financially speaking has not been demonstrated.
Tell us why Harvard is an elite school. Hint: It’s not because each Harvard student scored higher on the SAT than each student at BU.
Pointing out your misconceptions is not an insult. You mentioned test scores twice. Having worked, albeit only shortly, in the admissions office of a school some would call elite, I saw plenty of not-so-hot test scores coming in. Harvard accepts plenty of students with a 2100 combined score on their SAT.
They aren’t elite students. They weren’t good enough to get into anywhere elite.
How many students who couldn’t get into Princeton got a degree from University of Phoenix instead? For the Princeton rejectees who went elsewhere, were they educated worse than their peers who went to Princeton?
Coming back to this:
Please list the elite schools that are not expensive. I’m having trouble finding them.
The marginal cost of a student is not $90k; that is absolutely correct. But If I clone that school and put the duplicate a few states over, I’ve doubled costs, doubled tuition revenue, and halved the endowment. I’m not seeing how this makes college cheaper.
State funding doesn’t make the cost of college lower, it just changes who pays for it. You are correct that state funding has been waning. VA’s contribution to UVA is about 6% of it’s budget: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/how-much-state-funding-does-the-university-of-virginia-receive/2013/09/12/fb999782-1baf-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html
That looks worse than it actual it, because a good chunk of the school’s budget is covered by research grants. The hospital is in there. Etc. But still, the total cost of an undergrad education comes out to ~$20k/year (as opposed to 4x that elsewhere) with the student paying about half that. I’m generally in favor of state-subsidized post-secondary education options, but I haven’t thought about it carefully.
Ultimately, if we want to make college cheaper, we should examine schools with high and low operating costs to better understand what makes a difference.
Well, it is partly an elite school because they largely accept people that would be successful anyway; scores and grades are a good proxy for that. So you are wrong on that count. If you switched the students at Harvard for those at BC, the “results” Harvard gets would be less positive. The further down the academic spectrum you go, the worse the results would be. Additionally, they actually have a large value added in terms of education and connections. So the basic gist is that they are elite because they select elite students, and provide world class education and connections among other things.
It’s not a misconception. The reality is that you need very good score, a ton of other stuff, and luck to get into an elite school. For example, 8% of incoming Harvard students had perfect SAT scores and the top 25% had near perfect scores. Seventy-five percent score over 2100 which puts you in the 96th percentile of test takers. The idea that scores and grades are NOT a focus of every elite school is nonsense. They may not be the sole focus, but I never said they were.
GASP!!! Once again 2100 is 96th percentile. That is not a bad score, nor does it indicate a less than rigorous standard. Furthermore, such students are not the norm, and usually have lots of other positive qualities to make up for those “deficiencies”.
They actually are elite students by almost every definition.
Please try to read for comprehension. I didn’t say or imply Princeton rejects end up at UoP.
Most Ivy League schools greatly subsidize low income students which makes the cost of attending a school like Harvard for the average student around $20k. That is fairly cheap and a great value. So, yes there are plenty of elite schools that are not expensive for the average student.
And before you move the goal posts saying it’s only artificially cheap because their endowment subsidizes the costs, recognize that the state plays that role in most schools to a greater or lesser extent, and that having a $30 billion plus endowment is wrong to begin with. Harvard could easily accept twice as many students with the same subsidies provided.
Do you actually read? Please point out where I said this step makes college cheaper? I didn’t. I explicitly said twice that my initial goal was to make it a better value.
Second, if you duplicated Harvard a few states over, your costs would not necessarily double, and you wouldn’t halve your endowment. Your argument doesn’t correspond to basic economic principles that larger organizations can take advantage of efficiencies because of scale. Even in fields like education where there is a cost disease, those things can still be exploited.
If you’re claiming that the education provided at Harvard is substantially better than at good public universities, I’d like to see some evidence. I taught pre-meds at Yale, and the rigor of the chemistry program was IMO weak compared to what I saw elsewhere, such as at UMass Amherst.
96th percentile is hardly elite. Good job; fifty thousand kids scored better. As we all know, these schools don’t rack and stack; they’re building a class. Yes, you have to be able to handle the coursework, but the truth remains that elite schools reject plenty of higher scoring applicants for people like my classmate who got a 500 on the math section on the SAT, and the one who had to take precalc our first year. Not everyone can make the cut, and they get the thin envelope.
I didn’t say or imply that you said or implied that Princeton rejects end up at UoP. We both know they don’t. So where do they end up? And was their education lacking? You did say we would benefit from more Princeton graduates. And I’d like to know why. With data, preferably.
A subsidized education costs the same as an unsubsidized one. Someone is paying for it. It’s still a $90k education. Do we really want more of those, and who should pay for them? Why not more educations that cost less? After all, we haven’t seen any evidence in this thread that those cheaper educations are sub-par.
You can increase the value by decreasing the cost. I guess you haven’t done that. So where is the increase in value?
Perhaps I would understand better if you gave us an example. Is there a school that has reduced costs by expanding?
How exactly could you prove that? Outcomes and career earning are better as are a number of other metrics, but a quatifiable value added of the education alone is basically impossible to know. That said, almost every student will be better off with a Harvard diploma as opposed to a good public university one.
Absent context it may not be. That’s partly why Harvard isn’t made up of kids scoring 2100 without superlative credentials in numerous other areas.
Yes, and the point is that doesn’t need to be the case to the extent it is. There is no reason why a school should be accepting 8% of applicants when the reality is that the majority of them could excel at that school.
Then why did you ask?
As if that is a relevant or logical question. As I said initially, it’s a cascade downward.
Why do you keep bringing this up when that wasn’t the point of this particular suggestion? Your initial inquiry was for me to cite an elite school that didn’t cost students much. I did so.
It’s not an either/or.
No, you can’t really in every case. There are plenty of schools that are cheap, but the degree and the education provided is basically worthless. There is a huge drop off below a good state school in terms of ROI. Brand signaling matters and is an integral part of any cost-benefit analysis.
Regardless, there are methods to make school somewhat cheaper, but the reality is that most schools are not horribly managed to the point where you could substantially cut costs to students if they were run more efficiently.
I have already explained why many schools don’t expand. The point was that expansion doesn’t raise costs linearly.
I suppose we just interpreted the opening post differently. The first sentence made me think the main goal of the discussion was to discuss lowering the cost/tuition to students, not to lower the actual cost per student.
If you’re claiming that the education provided at Harvard is substantially better than at good public universities, I’d like to see some evidence. I taught pre-meds at Yale, and the rigor of the chemistry program was IMO weak compared to what I saw elsewhere, such as at UMass Amherst.
Doesn’t really matter. Harvard and Yale are more difficult programs to get into than UMass so therefore employers value those graduates more. And that’s the problem with just “building more colleges”. You can’t build more 200 year old Ivy League institutions.
Not really. Subsidies create economic distortions. By decreasing the effective cost of an education, government is increasing the demand and encouraging suppliers (schools) to increase costs.