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by dragonwriter 810 days ago
If there is effectively unlimited ability to pay, and the additional revenue can be used for higher-quality services (and since its free money for the institution, the marginal quality per dollar hardly matters) there is little reason, even as a not-profit-seeking institution, not to raise tuition.

The way to stop it is to turn off the unlimited ability to pay, which is tricky to do while maintaining both independent private education institutions and a desire to promote access the way federal aid was intended to, but it probably can be done by cost caps for institutions to be eligible for aid (which can apply only for students with federal aid, so long as there is no negative discrimination rule for such students).
1 comments
brigadier132 810 days ago
> there is little reason, even as a not-profit-seeking institution, not to raise tuition

Except the well-being of the students? Not for profit institutions are supposed to be immune to this kind of behavior.

Also I agree with you that the way to stop this is to end student loans.

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dragonwriter 810 days ago
> Except the well-being of the students?

The long-term well-being of the students is not what most educational institutions frame as their charitable mission, and even if they did they don’t have a good way to assess marginal impacts on it the way they do other things, so its unlikely to get factored in consistently even if there is an intention to respect it.

> Not for profit institutions are supposed to be immune to this kind of behavior.

No, charitable non-profit institutions are supposed to be immune to seeking returns to investors, not from seeking money to serve what they have defined as their charitable mission. Quite the opposite.

> Also I agree with you that the way to stop this is to end student loans.

I very specifically did not say the solution was to end student loans, I said it was to condition aid (including whatever combination of grants and loans) on cost caps.

(I think aid should be mostly or all grants and not loans, but that’s unrelated to the cost of tuition problem.)

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