[philwelch]

I would make student debt dischargeable through bankruptcy and I would also favor the federal government no longer providing, subsidizing, or guaranteeing student loans.

The "cost" of higher education is a sham; with no incentive to ever reduce costs, the cost will always rise to match incoming revenues. Meanwhile, student loans are a predatory mechanism where teenagers are encouraged to take on tens of kilodollars of undischargeable, unsecured debt. This combination has allowed the cost of higher education to grow out of control, backed by the cheap, subsidized credit of millions of Americans. Very reminiscent of the housing bubble, in fact.

[bobochan]

As a parent paying college tuition right now I want to agree, but as a professor I see the other side of it. I teach at the graduate level and despite the high tuition we lose money on every student that we accept. It costs a lot to have faculty spending two hours with each student alone in office hours, plus six hours of class time per week, and countless hours of support virtually 18/7 via email.

My time as faculty is just the tip of the iceberg: the cost of the buildings and grounds, IT costs, academic and administrative support, and the costs to support research, let alone student services and things like admissions, career services, etc.

My father was an engineer that spent his retirement volunteering to teach computer skills to anyone who was interested. I will be retiring in a few years and I plan to follow in his footsteps, however humble my contributions may be. I would love to contribute to a change that would make high quality education available to many more people at a much lower costs, but as a long time participant in MOOCs, I am just not sure they are the way.

[tathougies]

American universities spend much more on buildings and resources. The kind of gym and pool we bad in our tiny liberal arts college was way better than any college resources of europe. Even public universities here spend tons on non academic costs. Way more than other countries. Sowell covers this in 'inside American education'.

Alleviating debt and making it easier to pay more expensive loans incentivizes colleges to compete to attract students who can now affors higher price points

[jccalhoun]

It is becoming an arms race. Colleges in the USA build these things to attract potential students. If one colleges has them and the nearby comparable college doesn't then the one without looks worse in comparison.

[sytelus]

Causes of rising tution: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/05/05/report-says-a...

[tathougies]

Your report restricted itself to public universities, which of course are more highly affected by governmental funding decisions. Also your journal has an agenda, so it makes sense it wants to secure more federal funding.

[OatsAndHoney]

I fundamentally believe programs like MIT OCW and MOOCs are the way of the future. The problem with MOOCs is that they lack focus and quality control.

For example, School Yourself is the single best math program I've ever discovered on the internet: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-algebra-schoolyourse...

Compare that to the Calc1 course from MIT on EdX as well. The algebra course engages you, helps you think through problems, and offers a customized learning path with a virtual tutor. The MIT course is just lecture and reading materials, it's not interactive, and it doesn't help you to discover the topics on your own in the same way that School Yourself does.

I desperately want to see a focused study program from an entity like EdX that takes a person from algebra to discrete mathematics using the model of School Yourself. I also want to see a similar course path for physics and chemistry.

Being a liberal arts major I wouldn't be where I am in technology today if it wasn't for friends, IRC, and places like EdX. I was willing to literally sift through hundreds of hours of content to get here though. Not everyone has that kind of time or interest, we need to make it easier for everyone to learn.

If we can just have a single platform that really focuses on bringing value to the individual and giving them a strong base to work from piece by piece, then we would have so many more mathematicians, physicists, engineers, programmers, etc.., all without crushing student debt. Imagine the innovation that we could realize!

[ibarea277]

Why do you think college is 10x more expensive now? Seems like maybe some of those expenses are not materially impacting education quality, unless you think that the generation that got us to the moon was working with absolutely substandard educations.

[jccalhoun]

I have a friend who is an advisor at a Big 10 school. While going through the old papers in her office she found the budget of the school from the late 90s. The school's expenses have doubled in that time. Part of it is certainly the amenities arm race. However, the amount of money they get from the state has only gone up by 50%.

[philwelch]

> While going through the old papers in her office she found the budget of the school from the late 90s. The school's expenses have doubled in that time. Part of it is certainly the amenities arm race. However, the amount of money they get from the state has only gone up by 50%.

The implication here is usually that the amount of money they get from the state is insufficient to keep up with costs, therefore universities are forced to raise tuition. I don't think this is true. I suspect universities would raise tuition anyway, and if they got more money from the state, they would just increase their costs even more.

[sytelus]

Increase in tuition is almost entirely due to pull back in state funding coupled with increased administrative/executive overhead. Vast majority of increase don't go to faculty. Keep in mind tuition has increased by 3.1% each year on inflation adjusted basis [1]. I don't think faculty paychecks have increased by that rate anywhere close.

[1] https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...

[cousin_it]

At least for subjects like math or programming, I think the right way might be self-study (going through a textbook and solving all exercises) plus an hour of one-on-one time with a teacher every couple days to check progress and resolve questions.

[sjy]

When you say you 'see the other side of it' that suggests that you think the status quo is inevitable. But wasn't tuition much cheaper when you were an undergraduate?

[ng12]

I'm sure they make a killing on undergrads though. I can't imagine losing money when you're paying adjuncts a few grand to teach a class of 60 students.

[bobochan]

We do not have many adjuncts so I don’t think we actually lose less money on undergraduates. If it were not for the generosity of alumni and an endowment built over two centuries then I am not sure how we would stay afloat.

[roganartu]

> I would make student debt dischargeable through bankruptcy and I would also favor the federal government no longer providing, subsidizing, or guaranteeing student loans.

I completed a Bachelor and Master degrees at a top 50 world-ranked university with an (Australian) government sponsored loan of, by graduation, around $30k USD, that I never would've had a hope of funding privately at that point in my life (or honestly any point after if I had never gotten the degree and hence a high-paying job).

My loan is not dischargeable through bankruptcy, and is repaid as a percentage of taxable income (~10% at the top tier), and not repaid at all if you earn below a threshold a few multiples above the poverty line. The "interest" is actually just inflation as the cash rate from the reserve bank is applied to the outstanding balance at year end. My interest last year was $800 AUD on a $40k AUD balance.

I disagree that the problem is specifically easy access to capital. There is a value in attending university; it creates an educated population which benefits everyone. I believe the core of the problem in the US is the lack of appetite for regulation and government intervention leading to a situation where the government guarantees private capital to fund things that they don't control the cost of. This creates a reason for the lender to discount the risk of the debt (because the government guarantees it by making it undischargeable) leading to capability for borrowers to get bigger loans. Universities quickly cottoned on and billed more for less, and the cycle continues until it (eventually) collapses.

The cost of degrees in Australia are easily regulated as the majority of universities are government institutions. There is one private university but the government loan limits are often not enough to finish a 4 year degree there so in reality only rich kids whose parents wish to buy them business connections attend.

I think it's the government guaranteeing loans to expensive institutions are the problem, not that people are getting degrees. Why remove all government loan assistance? Just stop giving it to people who want to go to private universities.

[haihaibye]

The argument for student debt not being dischargable is to stop lots of people declaring bankruptcy upon graduation.

You can repossess a house or a car, but you can't repossess a degree.

If there was an option of cancelling a degree (either because of bankruptcy or user disatisfaction) this could perhaps work for vocational degrees or where the degree is 100% signalling.

If some kind of learning took place - how do you give that up?

[philwelch]

This would have the effect of drying up the credit market for completely unsecured 5-6 figure loans to teenagers. This is the intended effect.

[novok]

An idea is to make universities add some skin in the game and personally fund a portion of student loans for their students along with bankruptcy provisions for those loans.