If you lived in Norway as one of a number of possible examples your healthcare would cost you nothing, being covered by federal taxes, and your college would also be without out of pocket costs. Why because in Norway the policies of the government are designed to foster wellbeing for every Norweigan, whereas in the U.S. both healthcare and colleges are structured for maximum profit. One hundred thousand dollars for a year of college, to be honest, I don’t know how an average middle-class family could do it. Even the average price seems unbelievable to me. As this report notes, “According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for tuition, fees, housing and food was $56,190 at private, nonprofit four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students saw an average $24,030 sticker price.”
Illustration by Robert Neubecker / The New York Times
It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring, we’re catching our first glimpse of it.
One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price — room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane laptop — of $98,426. A student making three trips home to Los Angeles or London from the Nashville campus during the year could hit six figures.
This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close to this anytime soon, and about 35 percent of Vanderbilt students — those who get neither need-based nor merit aid — pay the full list price.
But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. Their willingness to cross it […]
In the United States”Not for Profit” status has become a fiction like much else. Just look at the growth of administrators in both Healthcare and Academia along with their salaries to see just how much as farce it is. There is little of value delivered for all this bureaucracy but when you get the bills, boy you know you must be paying dearly for somebody. What you actually end up paying for is not the education, but the brand name and the abilities to socialize with the elites. As has been said elsewhere:
“Price discrimination in the form of scholarships and the “show us exactly how much money is in your wallet” scam they call “need-based-aid” allowing universities have essentially perfect price discrimination and to gobble up the entire consumer surplus is definitely a big part of it.
Imagine any other service where they demanded your bank statements before they told you what they would charge you, and the impact that would have on sticker price.”
Great scam if you can have it, but that is what American education has become. It is no wonder that the signal that we have profoundly lost our way is in our worldwide rankings for education.
To make matters worse, many college courses are taught by adjuncts or graduate students who are paid a pittance for their efforts while the administration sucks up all the profit.
Terri Quint
on Saturday, April 6, 2024 at 8:44 am
Beside the fact that the US is soaked in greed throughout the business world, there are other reasons for the high tuition that universities charge. Years ago, throughout the country, higher education was funded by the state at about 80%. When Republicans slowly took over state legislatures, they kept lowering the amounts that the state paid into higher education. It is now down to about 10%; thus, tuition is really high in most states. But that’s the way Republicans are—they just hate to fund things like health care, education, child care, the environment, etc. That is why this coming election is so vitally important to the US. It will only get worse when more Republicans win the presidency, the House and the Senate. People must wake up and vote Democrat if they want to save this nation becoming a third world country.
In the United States”Not for Profit” status has become a fiction like much else. Just look at the growth of administrators in both Healthcare and Academia along with their salaries to see just how much as farce it is. There is little of value delivered for all this bureaucracy but when you get the bills, boy you know you must be paying dearly for somebody. What you actually end up paying for is not the education, but the brand name and the abilities to socialize with the elites. As has been said elsewhere:
“Price discrimination in the form of scholarships and the “show us exactly how much money is in your wallet” scam they call “need-based-aid” allowing universities have essentially perfect price discrimination and to gobble up the entire consumer surplus is definitely a big part of it.
Imagine any other service where they demanded your bank statements before they told you what they would charge you, and the impact that would have on sticker price.”
Great scam if you can have it, but that is what American education has become. It is no wonder that the signal that we have profoundly lost our way is in our worldwide rankings for education.
To make matters worse, many college courses are taught by adjuncts or graduate students who are paid a pittance for their efforts while the administration sucks up all the profit.
Beside the fact that the US is soaked in greed throughout the business world, there are other reasons for the high tuition that universities charge. Years ago, throughout the country, higher education was funded by the state at about 80%. When Republicans slowly took over state legislatures, they kept lowering the amounts that the state paid into higher education. It is now down to about 10%; thus, tuition is really high in most states. But that’s the way Republicans are—they just hate to fund things like health care, education, child care, the environment, etc. That is why this coming election is so vitally important to the US. It will only get worse when more Republicans win the presidency, the House and the Senate. People must wake up and vote Democrat if they want to save this nation becoming a third world country.