[rustybolt]

> Fun fact #1: you rent your cap and gown in the US. You have to return them. And they’re expensive, too! I paid $94 just for the privilege of renting mine, which is insane because they probably cost way less than that to manufacture.

Ah, yes, of course this is how it works in the US.

[filoleg]

It depends entirely on school.

Mine wasn't like that (and still isn't). Multiple friends of mine are graduating from NYU this month, and their situation isn't like like that either.

Every school I've ever encountered gives an option to purchase (with some being way more affordable than others). E.g., NYU JD (law school) cap and gown is roughly $98 to purchase (not to rent) this year.

[nsvd2]

FWIW I'm in the US and I bought mine. Renting does seem to make more sense here as the gown has no utility outside of this one event.

[philipwhiuk]

You generally rent caps and gowns in the UK too. Can you share where you are that you buy them?

[noelwelsh]

Here is one company that provides the gowns for many UK universities: https://www2.edeandravenscroft.com/non-ceremony/. I could be kitted with the appropriate gowns for my UK degrees for a few hundred squid each.

Academics, who attend many graduation events, often end up buying their own gown. I believe you are supposed to use the gown of the university you graduated from, so they must be for sale somewhere.

Once you have your own gown you can customize it. I haven't seen any profs with LEDs additions to their gowns, but adding extra pockets to hide a book or snacks is fair game.

[philipwhiuk]

Yeh but most undergraduates (and probably graduates) will rent because it's cheaper for a one-off occasion. As you said it's mainly academics that buy.

Looks like Ede no longer sells my University gown but https://churchillgowns.com/ does. Again rent/buy.

[zipy124]

You are allowed to turn up in your own though, no one will check. I even had people turn up in the wrong colour gown at my graduation.

[morpheuskafka]

I don’t doubt that some offer and charge for rentals. (I think mine only charged $130 ish for purchase though.)

However, I am shocked to hear that there is not even an option to purchase them at OP’s university. Many people like to keep them, especially the cap at least, as a souvenir, or their parents will keep it. Besides, couldn’t they make more money selling them?

[xp84]

At my college you rented the gowns, or at least that was the default, but I think the cap was bought and yours to keep.

Also, as a souvenir, the tassel, which is decorated with a charm showing the year graduated, is also always (obviously) yours to keep.

It’s very common in America for young people to hang that tassel from their car’s center rear-view mirror.

[philipallstar]

Yes, you have to pay a decent wage to the people helping you fit, cleaning, and storing the goods. Manufacture is done in a low cost country with cheap labour, so buying clothing seems cheap.

[kachnuv_ocasek]

Do you truly believe most of that goes towards wages?

[philipallstar]

Well, some will go on corporation tax, some on business rates, some on rent of the land the storage is on (which itself has to pay corporation tax, I suppose).

[piker]

Yes. Competitive forces would push the cost toward the most expensive input which is likely people. That would be somewhat muted if the supplier was sole source but even then outright purchases would put downward pressure on the rental price.

[pdpi]

Given that you’re forced to rent the cap and gown, I think it’s safe to say that competitive forces are entirely absent in this scenario.

[suddenlybananas]

What competitive forces? It's not like people have a choice in choosing whether they want a particular cap or gown and the people who contract the rental agreement (i.e. the university admin) are not the ones bearing the cost.

[skrebbel]

I'm surprised at the concept, somehow I thought the whole "graduation cap" thing was just in movies. Seems out of place in a country that's otherwise so individualistic.

[arealaccount]

Colleges are far less “individualistic” than most places in the country.

[keybored]

We are by all concievable measures living in the best timeline and under the best economic system. Just look at the graphs. Just consider what an American symbol the graduation cap is. We don’t really know why, but I think a likely reason is that making graduation caps under most economic systems is too labor intensive. Some families might not have even been able to send their children to universities since they couldn’t rent or buy graduation caps—and certainly not make them themselvse—and not doing so would be a complete humiliation for their family or clan or what they have in other countries.

[Filligree]

Too coherent. You need to work on your simulation.

[CyberDildonics]

What in the world is going on here?

[nunez]

That must be new; I walked in 2009 and we got to keep ours

[xp84]

High school lets you (makes you?) buy them. My HS and college had almost the exact same color, so I probably could have gotten away with reusing mine!

[CyberDildonics]

It's insane, why doesn't the school just store a bunch of them.

[piker]

As opposed to what buying the thing and storing it or throwing it away?

[jychang]

It's a $10 gown, renting it for $100 is madness

[xp84]

Welcome to captive audience pricing! There are more a few companies who have this type of business, especially targeting those in institutions of all kinds.

They probably are fully gone now, but when I was in college some (IRL) classes, usually the big auditorium ones, added interactivity in the form of realtime polls and quizzes with a little “clicker” device. This was of course $30 or whatever and just used some custom RF protocol to register your vote across the room. Single-source, you have to buy it to be in the class.

Textbooks themselves, electronic or not, same racket. Professor is sold the book, but it’s the students who pay. (Don’t forget of course the scam of “writing your own math book” and requiring it!!)

Prisons: some private company always has a deal to “supply telephone service” and charges the inmates or their families rates that are higher than international long distance used to cost.

All of these things are sold to administrators who have no fiscal concerns with the service or product because the institution isn’t the one paying, so there’s zero pricing pressure. If there’s even multiple contractors in the niche, they are more incentivized to compete on sending cool freebies to the administrators, or add perks that benefit them, than they are to compete on pricing for the students/inmates/etc. like, say, Jostens might throw in “free school ID cards” which is technically “saving the school money” in order to get the yearbook contract, while making $100 a yearbook in gross profit on $150 yearbooks. Note: all numbers made up.

[numbsafari]

Throwing it away after single use is madness.

[sudokatsu]

I think they’re saying it should be much cheaper to rent, and we shouldn’t throw them away.

[tekne]

Is it?

My issue with this type of thinking is it assumes "transport cost <<< manufacturing cost" -- a decent assumption for a lot of goods throughout a lot of history, but just... not really true for lots of things in a modern supply chain.

The cost of moving the gown between users -- in the form of the user needing to give back the gown to the service, who must then clean it, inspect it, etc. -- may in fact be far higher than the cost of manufacturing a new gown and only needing your supply lines to be "one way".

[Basketb926]

trash doesn't disappear, everything has to go somewhere

[tekne]

Sure, but there's a lot of random matter on Earth -- excess trash being an issue is less about space and more about externalities (e.g. toxic chemicals leaching).

Being mindful of how much trash we produce does not necessitate producing less (or more!) -- but merely balancing the pros and cons.

[Aissen]

I was wondering why I saw them for cheap on aliexpress…

[lostlogin]

And if you order XXXXL it might fit. A little tight, but bearable.

[jakecraige]

Yeah this is not universal. I bought mine