For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.
Because THOSE schools are expensive.
- IN STATE VS OUT OF STATE -
I went to a SUNY (State university) about 18 yrs ago and it was $3,000/semester. Today it’s $3,500/semester, so it didn’t go up by much. I stayed in state so it was lower for me. If you are not from the state it was $10,000/ semester (still on the lower end). Compare that to other people in other schools taking the same major as me. It was about 20,000/ semester for in state. We all ended up at the same jobs, I just didn’t carry the debt.
For the US, staying in state helps a lot. Unfortunately I think the grand idea of moving away and dorming is pushed onto kids by the media. Another comparison, my wife, who also went to school in the same state as me, went to at a CUNY (City University) and it was $1,800/semester. It was a pretty great school and campus, but not a school you’d see in the movies or tv shows. We both chose to stay within our means and not put a burden on ourselves or our families. Today we are very successful with no debt.
- SCHOOLS AS BRAND -
One more thing that drives price, is that schools are also brands now, and you are paying for that. There is peer pressure to get into schools with better awareness. Same reason a kid would rather wear apparel from nike vs walmart. My niece just started college this year and was brainwashed into picking a school she couldn’t afford. They took out a loan and the school end up being horrible for her. She dropped out during the last semester and I was told all the money spent this year was a wash. She’s now going to end up going to the school her family originally recommended to her. There are plenty of schools in the states that are good and wont cost an arm and a leg.
- CLASS FLUFF -
For the sake of keeping kids in school they pack in so many additional unneeded electives. I think I had to take 11 within my first 2yrs and each of my classes was 3hrs long. Some days I would have 9hrs of class. That is not including the down time in between those clases, so I could be there around 11-12hrs on a single day. If you want to keep a part time job to help pay for college, then that may mean you have to take additional winter and summer classes. In a lot of places this isn’t covered during the regular months so you have to pay for more. This fluff is one of the ways they keep bachelors and masters programs to run for as long as they do and at the prices they do. Some of these schools do run expedited programs where if you have previous electives that transfer over, you can do your degree in half of the time.
side effects of Boomer economic policies and their ignorance regarding the changes they caused
All the schools rip off the rich to subsidize the middle class. You’re essentially subsidizing a bunch of students who are paying close to nothing.m, because you can afford $70k tuition.
As another example, Harvard is free for anyone whose family makes less than $85k per year. Not just the tuition ($56k per year), but also the housing (worth $13k), food ($8k), health insurance ($1600), books, and a modest living stipend designed to cover things like a computer, commuting/travel, other expenses.
And those who make up to $150k per year are capped at 10% of their income to pay for all that. In the end, the average cost of Harvard for the typical student is about $15,000 per year including housing and food.
In other words, attending Harvard is cheaper than not attending school for anyone whose families make less than $150k, which is basically 75% of the nation. So if you’re actually paying full tuition, you’re probably pretty rich.
Only thing I’ll disagree with is they’re not ripping off the rich, because it doesn’t matter to the rich. They’re killing the middle class though, but that is the way it’s been and the way it will continue to be. You will either be rich (haha, jk) or poor, and that’s the end game.
Same reason everything in the US is expensive: we have largely unregulated, runaway capitalism which pervades every facet of life. Everything from housing to academia to health care is for profit – not only profit, but for obscene year-over-year increases in profit. Those at the top regularly make money hand over fist even selling basic necessities, and if they don’t continue taking more and more, they’re seen as failures and replaced by one who will.
The cherry on top is that, for the most parts, the citizens no longer have any real power to change any of it.
Around the same time that health care becomes affordable in the US (major hypothetical, of course), it probably means a wind change has occurred such that university costs would also be coming down. But it would be a systematic change.
This is a private school so they don’t get much in the way of direct government funding. State-funded schools are considerably cheaper. I went to Wright State University in Ohio. Right now it’s about $13k/yr in tuition. This is still rather expensive on a global scale.
Why do private schools charge that much? Because people (like you) will pay that much. What about the University of Chicago makes it so that you are willing pay for it? What do you or your son hope to get out of it that a school in your home country (I’m assuming Canada) can’t give him? To compare to Wright State, even for out-of-country students the tuition is less than half of Chicago’s tuition. Is the benefit of going to Chicago worth that much more? If it is, then that is exactly what you’re paying for.
learning is just a sidehustle to the sports franchise they run?
Idk why you phrased that as a question as if it isn’t pretty obvious
because america is the land of profit over humans. its just that simple.
its ingrained in the entire country. if some rando at the top isnt profiting, it must be killed. its the problem with healthcare. its the problem with government (congress). its the reason we are entrenched in a 2-party hellscape.
And if the university of Chicago is that “Chicago school of economics” then this kid is going to come out the other end repesting close to what you said, but as a positive. :(
Is that just America though? Are there other countries where profit isn’t king?
I’m pretty confident the French wouldn’t stand for “rule by profit”
I’m afraid I don’t have good news…
I’d put money down to Kickstart a documentary series where we fly American Redditors (and Lemm users) to Europe to film their reaction when they see that, yes, they still need to pay for items with money (and perform labor to get the money! 😱😱)
I mean, I’m aware that France has a capitalist economy. I mostly meant to say that Americans let capitalists step all over them in many ways that the French would riot over
not that im aware of.
america was founded on this crazy idea of ‘rugged individualism’. that ‘socialism’ is inherently evil. its every man for themselves, and anyone not rich is so because they arent doing it correctly.
its also the reason why even a class full of dead kindergartners is ok as long as we get to keep our guns.
Because people are still paying it. That’s how you set the price of things. If people are paying 70k why would you sell it cheaper?
If you can charge for something mandatory (minimum requirement for a decent job, house, healthcare) then you can set whatever price you want for it. You just need to push it to the limit of what people can finance to keep paying for over their whole lives.
Going to a private university certainly isn’t a requirement, and in-state tuition for public universities is much, much lower (but still too high).
My parents paid for me to attend a private university in the late 80’s, for which I’m both extremely fortunate and grateful.
I wanted to do the same for my children, but there was no way. I pay half, my parents pay half, and my kids have very small loans.
I was experiencing significant disappointment that I wasn’t able to pay for my kids’ education the way my parents paid for mine.
At one point I used an inflation calculator to get an idea of how much my education cost in today’s dollars, and it turns out that when it’s corrected for inflation, I’m paying what my parents paid. My kids’ education is more than twice as expensive as mine was if you correct for inflation.
Because Reagan defunded public secondary education. And then instead of fixing that in the late 90s/early 00s, they made school loans non expungable and federally guaranteed, so schools didn’t need to keep their prices low and competitive anymore.
It always goes back to Reagan…
This is the real answer I was looking for in the comments.
Edit: it always goes back to Reagan.
Why did unions lose their power? Reagan threatened striking ATC workers with firing if they didn’t return to work immediately. Suddenly striking workers could be fired.
Why did weed become a life sentence drug? Reagan.
Who demonized the poor on welfare, calling them welfare queens? Who is Ronald Reagan, Alex?
Deregulated Wall street, banking and commerce sector, too.
If there’s a glaring problem with the USA, there’s a very good chance it dates back to RR.
BTW Nancy & The Astrologer is a great name for a band
Jesus Christ, so many people don’t know the real history of what happened while this is the real answer.
To add on to Ronald “Fucking” Reagan defunding universities, he did it because as governor of California he absolutely hated the anti-Vietnam War protests happening on University of California campuses and thought a good way to limit attendance of ‘rabble rousing’ (re: poor) students was to take away their funding. Conservatives nationwide saw this and thought ‘that’s great, we should do that, too.’ and they did.
Thanks Ronnie. You’re the unwanted microwaved dog shit that ruined America 40 years and your stink is still smelled in full force to this day. I didn’t believe in hell, but I hope they made a special one just for you.
The government also ramped up the interest rates on student loans while universities increased the price faster than inflation, I paid around 3-4% in 2008, the lowest was around 2.7% in 2020, currently they are close to 7%. The whole thing should be covered by state and federal taxes we’re already paying to subsidize them, but it just keeps getting worse to squeeze every drop of blood from people who weren’t born with a trust fund.
Yep, this needs to be higher. Since student loans are guaranteed and pushed on all students, universities have been spending oodles of fucking money to justify higher tuition costs, which justifies bigger loans that can never be discharged. The banks win, the schools win, the student lose both academically and financially.
Public universities could actually have stricter requirements on who could go to college, because if it’s already funded by taxes, you don’t want to be throwing money away on students who will fail out of the degree path they’re trying to pursue.
Finally, two words: “Legacy Admissions”
While true overall, University of Chicago is an elite private school with a hedge fund sized endowment with vast majority of students coming from families who pay 70k with two checks two weeks before each semester starts.
This how they stay elite.
secondary --> tertiary?
Sure, I guess post-secondary is the term usually used
I just wasn’t sure if reagan did anything with HS budgets and how that connected with college prices. That guy was such a cancer on the country. Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors altogether
Corporate greed.
Because there’s nothing more American than getting ripped off.
There’s probably more at play, but the govt is willing to back companies offering loans to cover higher and higher tuition costs, so said companies haven’t got to worry if the loans default or don’t return the full amount - it’s about setting an exorbitant “graduate tax” to keep a permanent stream of guaranteed income for as long as possible.
Higher loans means more repayments, and more money for universities, so they both raise tuition higher and higher to meet the limits of students. as long as banks or govt don’t ever ask for their loans back (which they won’t because it’ll collapse the whole system and possibly the economy with it) the price can inflate at much at it likes.
the same is at play in the UK, only we have “tuition caps” that every university course sets their prices to because there is simply no benefit to charging less, and no downside to charging more. Everyone can get a loan, no one is denied, and the government backs this process because it is essentially being held at ransom.
I know I turned it into a rant about UK education but the financial systems feel very similar. There’s simply too much money held up in a make believe cycle of IOUs that would immediately collapse a huge chunk of the American system if anyone willingly let it pop.
The only problem with this is that eventually it might just pop on its own, and no one will be ready.
US universities engage in price discrimination between different students.
For public schools, there is different tuition between in state and out of state students. There are also some state government programs based on merit and financial considerations.
For well endowed private schools, the universities will provide scholarships based on a variety of reasons. For students from rich families, those families are generally paying full price and there generally is the implication of additional donations.
This is the reason. Every public school, like University of Chicago, has non-resident pricing that’s typically two to four times higher than in-state resident tuition. Source: used to work at a state university.
The original idea was probably to encourage people to stay within their state and boost the state economy, but greed from the admins kinda changed the nature of things.
Given that state taxes heavily support higher education, it’s not the craziest idea in the world to give lower tuition to those who’ve been paying those taxes their whole lives.
The University of Chicago is private. The University of Illinois Chicago is public. They have the added issue the people definitely use the names interchangeably because they don’t know there’s more than one.
When I worked at the state University, we had lists to check that stuff. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times, not so much. Good catch!
Tuition is also higher for international students.
