Comments

Since we are about to send a kid off to a school that raised its already obscene tuition by 5K in one year, I've been wondering about this. College costs are prohibitive, and they keep rising, but people are still clamoring to get in. And I kind of wonder whether it isn't that high demand to get into schools that is driving the tuition increases; supply is limited, demand is high, so prices rise. It's the invisible hand at work. Maybe. Either that, or it's people getting away with murder just because they can.

-- CarolynJohnston - 22 Aug 2005

1) Outside of the top 10 (or so) schools, there is little economic advantage to choosing a higher-tier school. To the extent that there is such an advantage, it depends only on the school you graduate from, not from any earlier school.

2) In my experience (and I think my experience is fairly common), professors at less-well-regarded schools, and especially at community colleges, are more involved in teaching and often better teachers than professors at major research universities. (Many exceptions allowed for, of course.)

3) Entry to better schools through transfer is often easier than entry directly from high school.

Therefore: There seems little reason not to go cheap in the early college years unless you can get into MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, wherever, and can afford their costs.

-- DougSundseth - 22 Aug 2005

Doug--OFFHAND (and discounting for my under-education in statistics) that is my sense.

Jay Mathews has a good column on this, I think....and I believe there have been some sound statistical studies on the subject.

But why does the cost keep rising?

I know every source I've looked at says college costs are rising above inflation and have been for quite a while. (I should find out how long it's been...)

We have friends who just sent their son to a small private college in Ohio, and I'm going: WHY?

Why spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a small private college in Ohio (they're in Los Angeles; otherwise I wouldn't be ragging on Ohio. The travel costs are going to be huge.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 22 Aug 2005

As usual, I don't have facts at hand upon which to draw, but...

I believe there was an article in USA Today several months ago that said that real college costs were going down. I don't remember it well, but I think it had to do with availability of scholarships and perhaps the fact that more people were going to community colleges. It wasn't that tuition was going down; it was that the expense seen by the families was going down.

Now, I think that increased participation at community colleges would have a big impact on that. It isn't necessarily that students are opting for CC instead of four-year institutions. Even if no one made such a shift, the average cost of college would go down if a number of kids who would otherwise not go to college decided to go to CC. So, it could all be very misleading.

Still, I think there is something to drawing a distinction between the list price of college and the actual prices paid. I think that every time some legislature institutes an aid program, the colleges raise their tuitions. Thus, the students and their parents continue to pay the same amount, but the college gets an indirect subsidy from the government program. Loan programs can have a similar effect. If students can more easily borrow, then colleges can squeeze more money out of them, and they do. Obviously, I don't have data to prove it, so I'm guilty of just spouting off.

-- DanK - 22 Aug 2005

I've been on vacation, but I'll put my two cents in now:

Here's a simple way to look at the problem. Ivy League schools say that if they accept you, they'll give you the financial aid that you need to attend. At Ivy League schools, about half of the students get aid, and the other half don't.

Thus, simple math tells us that around 50% of Ivy League students come from families that can afford to pay out-of-pocket for a $180K education.

If I recall correctly, the median family income for students at Brown is something like $150K.

[Responders to this message, please remember that these eight schools are the Ivies: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth. No other school is an Ivy League school.]

-- CardinalFang - 25 Aug 2005

Hi Cardinal Fang!

Welcome back!

-- CatherineJohnson - 25 Aug 2005