| > ...none of your claims follow. That was my claim. To wit, that a college education is more valuable than the credential. > If it costs X to educate 10% of the population, it takes more than 2X to educate 20%. Why would the cost of providing education to more people increase as a multiple of the baseline costs? > And since there is no relief from lowered enrollment, prices will stay high. Restricting enrollment would increase costs as there is more competition among prospective students for the service. Students would have to outbid each other, not merely outperform each other to secure a spot. > Now college is something everyone's entitled too... [sic] An education is what we should entitle them to. As you note, colleges have been locked for decades in a competition for students by investing in new buildings, amenities, and sports with no regard for the effect on costs because of the price inelasticity of demand. And it has been a safe investment because student loans & grants have been so readily available. The best price controls available to us are exercised by holding the institutions accountable for certain outcomes (like excessive dropout & loan default rates), by providing an equivalent service at a lower cost (something like Obama's "free community college" option), and by making student loan debt dischargeable like most other debts. The ready availability of capital is part of what has driven up costs. > You should look at how many drop out after $20,000 or $50,000 worth of student loan debt. The national graduation rate was approximately 60% in 2012 [1], while the national student load default rate was 13.7% in 2014 [2]. Students who do not graduate are several times more likely to end up in default, but it is still a manageable risk overall for investors because student loans are so difficult to discharge and because most people will eventually pay them back, and still worth it for students because they still have a positive net ROI. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/national-stude... |