How much should college tuition be?

[Pb]

How much should 4 years of tuition at a public university be? 

[Tuco]

8a. Whatever the university can get.  The market needs to decide.

If it becomes an extension of our public education, then public universitiy costs will be free all whacked out by subsidies and graft inherent in the system even worse than they are now.
Private universities, 8a.

edit: forgot that "free" really means "paid for by somebody else"

[Ben]

While I chose 8, mine is an 8b.

As a public university, they can't charge whatever they want with my taxpayer dollars. They can charge whatever the amount is for efficient operation of the particular university. A school with a big engineering or physics dept (assuming they do good work) will cost a lot more to operate than a university that focuses on liberal arts. Also, I have no problem with a private university paying a great professor $500K a year, but because of the way public universities work, if you pay a great professor $500K a year, all the crappy professors have the opportunity for the same pay based on seniority, etc. Plus all the university employees end up on unsustainable Cadillac state employee retirement systems.

So private university, whatever the market will bear. Public university paid for by tax dollars, there has to be some oversight.  I would have no problem with an English degree costing $10K, while a physics degree at a renowned physics dept at the same school might cost $80K because of equipment costs, etc. Though I think all costs would come down if you could circumvent dealing with public employee unions.

[wmenorr67]

Really can't answer this honestly.  Tuition is only part of the equation.  Add in books, fees, room and board, and you easily will more than double your costs to attend.

Tuition for my son at Oklahoma is around $40K for four years but when it is all said and done OU will wind up getting $100K plus or minus for four years if he stays in the dorms all four years.  Even if he lives off campus you will have the expense of rent and utilities to factor in.

[RevDisk]

Uh, it depends?  Question doesn't take into account location, type of school, etc.

Obviously private college should charge whatever the market demands.
Non-profit schools should be whatever their charter says it should be. Some go for 'excellence', others do go for sane costs so everyone can get an education.
PUBLIC universities, owned and operated by the state, have a different set of demands. But that isn't market forces, per se, because they are not private industry.

 But obviously the costs involved are very different for a college or university in Manhattan and middle of nowhere Kansas. Anything that would cost $10k in boonies is the same cost as $20k or higher in Manhattan. Buildings, staff, maintenance costs, food pricing, and a million other things are impacted by cost of living. That alone makes it impossible to say how much a college should cost. Medical or law school is more expensive than English or teaching schools.

Impossible to answer the question, too open ended.

[makattak]

Right there.

NOW, we ought to be doing something about the artificial shifting of the demand curve, but that has nothing to do with the college's response to it.

[Ben]

But obviously the costs involved are very different for a college or university in Manhattan and middle of nowhere Kansas.

Yup, forgot to mention that in my reply. I think that could easily account for a 50% difference in costs between opposing ends of the real estate market.

[KD5NRH]

I would have no problem with an English degree costing $10K, while a physics degree at a renowned physics dept at the same school might cost $80K because of equipment costs, etc. Though I think all costs would come down if you could circumvent dealing with public employee unions.

My recommendation for this would be a simple rule stating that if you teach any courses that aren't required for a real, in-demand degree, you only get minimum wage, must teach evenings and weekends, and must wear a hairnet, polo shirt with name tag and shapeless khakis at all times so you can give your students a better example of what they should expect from their degree.

[AJ Dual]

Right there.

NOW, we ought to be doing something about the artificial shifting of the demand curve, but that has nothing to do with the college's response to it.

This, that's all that's needed.

And there shouldn't be such a thing as a "public" university anyway. Seems like it's mostly a way to create a tax-funded farm league for the various pro sports more than anything else anyway.

[Hutch]

While I can't prove this, it is my assertion that public universities are about as efficient as most government agencies, for much the same reason.  Unlike .gov, you can opt out altogether, but I think the analogy is sound.  The incentive to drive cost (and presumably, price) down is non-existent. I further assert, without proof, that the "tooth to tail" ratio has been skewing way toward the staff/admin side, compared to teachers, for decades.  Add to this the cost shifting, either to other payers, or to the student's future, and there's just no incentive to streamline or compete.

[KD5NRH]

While I can't prove this, it is my assertion that public universities are about as efficient as most government agencies, for much the same reason.

I think some of the reasons are identical, but remember that universities also have even more of a tendency to cater expensively to even the tiniest special interest groups.  Something that .05% of the population could never get passed at any level of government will happen in a heartbeat to appease 3 students in a 6,000 student university if they're portrayed as a "disadvantaged minority."

[Brad Johnson]

Can't remember where I heard it but a few years back I saw a very compelling business essay. It described how any education that could not reasonably expensed over ten year's average income and financials from a good-standing graduate in that discipline was an unwise investment.

Brad

[T.O.M.]

Purely my opinion, but making college at a public university free is only going to diminish (further) the value of a bachelor's degree, while further diminishing the actual value of trade schools, tech schools, etc.  One area where I think Mike Rowe is dead on is that we as a society have failed to appreciate the value of people who do real work for a living.  People who do jobs that are very necessary in our world.  People who get dirty at work, who build things, fix things, clean things, and tear things down.  Start pushing for everyone to go to college because it's free, and suddenly a whole lot of kids who would have gone to work in these areas, and may have done well at it, will go to college if for no other reason than it's free and a way to avoid growing up for another 4-5 years.  And when people start treating college the way we used to treat high school, some place you're expected to be, how long until the quality of education goes down?  Colleges aren't going to flunk kids out if they're getting .gov funding for each butt in a seat.  So suddenly classes get easier in some fields, and a diploma suddenly becomes the higher education equivalent of a participation trophy.

Looks, there are lots of ways to pay for college without making it free.  My father worked full time while getting a BA and M.Ed.  His friend paid for school via GI Bill.  There are tons of scholarships.  There are co-op programs.  It can be done. 

[lee n. field]

   How much should 4 years of tuition at a public university be?
You may only select up to 6 options.
FREE!
5k
10k
20k
30k
40k
50K
Whatever the university wants
   

As with medical treatment, by this time we have absolutely no idea what a free market price for college would be.

[KD5NRH]

Purely my opinion, but making college at a public university free is only going to diminish (further) the value of a bachelor's degree, while further diminishing the actual value of trade schools, tech schools, etc.

This, though IMO, every program including trade cert programs should include a couple semesters of business and economics.  Enough to handle most of the day to day running of a business and understand what the newspapers are putting out about market conditions.  A fair number of tradesmen end up either limping their own business along or failing at it because they didn't take those classes, and/or end up working for someone in one of those two situations.  Two semesters of each really ought to be high school graduate level, but I doubt we'll ever get those on the required curriculum for high schools.

[Hawkmoon]

I chose $40k. I think for tuition $10,000 per year is a reasonable number. I absolutely can't go along with "whatever they want." I know how much the president of our state university is getting paid, and it's obscene. So are the salaries for too many of the professors -- who don't really do much teaching, they just foist it of on graduate students (who are, effectively, indentured servants).

[Hawkmoon]

Yup, forgot to mention that in my reply. I think that could easily account for a 50% difference in costs between opposing ends of the real estate market.

I don't see how real estate values affect the cost of public universities at all. It's not like they pay taxes on their land or buildings, and if they want to enlarge the campus they can use eminent domain to steal[/i] buy the land at below fair market value.

[Ben]

I don't see how real estate values affect the cost of public universities at all. It's not like they pay taxes on their land or buildings, and if they want to enlarge the campus they can use eminent domain to steal[/i] buy the land at below fair market value.

They're always tearing down old buildings and putting up new buildings, pushing LEEDs, etc. My office for the last two years of my career was on a UC campus because the local congressional rep wanted a federal presence at that UC. Between university and fed dollars, the 15k sqft building cost $13 million. It would have been MUCH less per square foot in Kansas vs 100 yards from the ocean. It would likely not have been built at all at a private university.

[KD5NRH]

I don't see how real estate values affect the cost of public universities at all. It's not like they pay taxes on their land or buildings, and if they want to enlarge the campus they can use eminent domain to steal[/i] buy the land at below fair market value.

This, and if they were concerned about values, they'd build/expand on cheaper land instead of grabbing prime real estate.  For example, the local university has EDd a couple of blocks around the main campus to expand some facilities that don't really need to be there, while they still have plenty of unused space at the farm 3 miles away, plus a couple hundred acres around the farm that they could easily buy and use at well below the value of the other property.  They also complain about the need for more parking, but ignore the repeated suggestions to put in a couple of lots out at the farm and use their existing shuttle bus system to ferry students from there.  Heck, most dorm dwellers don't even need their cars for most of the week unless it's to go to the farm, but instead they get the best spaces.  People complaining that they need to build parking garages rather than expanding flat lots (The gym and football field alone have 20 acres of parking and there's now 24 acres of "just off campus" housing with its own parking closer than many of the university owned lots, plus shuttle service to/from three large apartment complexes.  Add to that the probably 30-40 acres of "green space" scattered around the campus, and it's pretty clear that lack of space isn't the issue; poor use of available space is.) get repeated "you wouldn't understand why that won't work and we don't have the time to explain it" every year when they start looking at another neighborhood to buy and demolish.

[zahc]

As with medical treatment, by this time we have absolutely no idea what a free market price for college would be.

QFFT.

[Fitz]

"whatever the university wants" with a caveat:

get the gov out of the business of loaning/forcing others to loan money to students.


It's absurd, and it's driven the cost up. Everyone being able to get near limitless loans is part of the problem.

[BlueStarLizzard]

I've been thinking on this and for the most part, I just think the public universities should be given the boot. Basically, I think something that is funded by tax payers should be "free" for taxpayers (and their children) But we can't afford the damn things and the academic standards are slipping further down to accommodate the incredibly lax standards of our public K-12 system.

I would only tolerate public universities if the academic standards were kept to a higher standard than anyone else. If they were, the taxpayers could probably afford a few of them, even at a free or incredibly low tuition rate. And we would only need a very few of them, since most students wouldn't be able to achieve the academic standards. I don't mind public spending for some really bright kids who are smart enough to actually make something of themselves and willing to work their asses off for four years to do it,  but they best be maintaining 3.5 GPA grades and doing it in some of the hardest classes known to man.

The rest would/could ask for whatever they wanted and I wish them luck on staying in business.

on a side note: I don't think this whole push for free collage would be happening if academic standards had been maintained in the first place.

[lee n. field]

I've been thinking on this and for the most part, I just think the public universities should be given the boot. Basically, I think something that is funded by tax payers should be "free" for taxpayers (and their children) But we can't afford the damn things and the academic standards are slipping further down to accommodate the incredibly lax standards of our public K-12 system.

Call me a dreamer, but I'm thinking the entire educational system should be rethought and remade, bottom to top.  Those the current system serves are not those it services, and the current system is bringing us into barbarism.

Things have not always been done this way.

[BlueStarLizzard]

Call me a dreamer, but I'm thinking the entire educational system should be rethought and remade, bottom to top.  Those the current system serves are not those it services, and the current system is bringing us into barbarism.

Things have not always been done this way.

I would not argue with this. Education has taken a back seat to wearhousing kids, feelings and social programing. None of which benefit the country.

[Hawkmoon]

Education has taken a back seat to wearhousing kids, feelings and social programing. None of which benefit the country.

Education has also taken a back seat to having a degree. Rather than being something earned by application of intelligence, a college degree has become another meaningless symbol of the entitlement society. The liberals have succeeded in brainwashing the populace into believing that everyone needs a college degree -- and then they're debased the colleges and universities to create a system under which everyone, no matter how ill-prepared and unintelligent, gets a degree ... in return for doing nothing more than showing up on campus for four (or five, or six, or ...) years, and taking out a lifetime of student loans to pay for it.

Meanwhile, the guys who dump garbage cans into the sanitation trucks are earning six figures in larger cities, while graduates of elite law schools (ahem) "can't" find a job.