As a current student and one who will graduate with roughly $60k in student debt, after scholarships and grants - I often question the legitimacy of the driving factors in increased tuition.
Most would say the volume of administrators has ballooned due to the increasing number of services universities now provide for the students. Better and more services offered to students should benefit quality of life.
Does the economic impact of modern universities serve as a net positive for society?
When we have more and more university staff using their salary to support their families they're contributing to the economy in a positive way.
When we have students graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, they're bound to repaying their loans. In order to do this, they must find a career and become "productive" members of society.
This of course ignores the ethical and societal implications of expensive tuition...
The article mentions "loose student loan underwriting standards." Here's what's going on:
The people originating the loans have no skin in the game. So, they don't call NYU or even Northern Essex Community College and say, "look, here's a student who wants to be a social worker, asking for 100K in loans to get the degree. We don't think they'll be able to repay that debt on a social worker's wages. So, no loan."
If the lenders WERE calling the colleges saying that, the colleges would not be escalating tuition as radically as they are.
It's not realistic to expect the kid who just got in to NYU or a community college to play that kind of hardball in negotiating tuition rates. But when the lenders don't play that hardball, it leaves higher-education executives trucking to the bank on the proceeds of those loans.
To my understanding, the problem is that when the lenders WERE calling colleges, it wasn't to say "this kid wants to borrow 100k in loans", it was to say "here's 50k in goodies, send your students to us for loans!". Hence the controversies over kickbacks and the like.
So ultimately, it's the same core issue as the 2008 housing collapse. When lenders don't have to give half a crap about the borrower's ability to repay a loan, they just keep issuing bigger and bigger loans.
"Legitimacy" is not really a factor when it comes to prices. Underlying production cost will put a floor on the price, absent subsidies, but the final dollar amount offered to the customer is a response to supply and demand. Universities are charging more because people will pay more — easy up-front money through loans is part of the reason why.
Most would say the volume of administrators has ballooned due to the increasing number of services universities now provide for the students. Better and more services offered to students should benefit quality of life.
Does the economic impact of modern universities serve as a net positive for society? When we have more and more university staff using their salary to support their families they're contributing to the economy in a positive way. When we have students graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, they're bound to repaying their loans. In order to do this, they must find a career and become "productive" members of society.
This of course ignores the ethical and societal implications of expensive tuition...