[snogglethorpe]

One thing I've noticed about American universities compared with universities in other countries (Japan, Korea, UK), is that almost every decent American university I've seen seems to be really well-maintained, in that the campus is very clean, in good repair, frequently renovated, etc, even the out-of-the-public-eye spaces (grad student offices and the like).

Japanese and Korean universities, on the other hand, are often rather shabby, even the top-tier ones (Toudai etc). They're still perfectly fine places for the intended purpose, mind you, just maybe a little worn.

I dunno how much of a part money maintenance and construction play in university costs, but I imagine it's labor-intensive, and so not exactly cheap...

[HeavenFox]

This. It basically holds true for any product: price doesn't increase linearly as quality goes up.

I go to college in U.S., and a lot friends of mine attend one of the best universities in China. I have the freedom to take practically any course in the university, and my friends basically know what their four years look like before freshman year. I never worry about finding seats in the library, and my friends sometimes have to camp outside before it opens near finals. I have plenty of resources (Profs, TAs, advisors, peer tutors) when I get stuck, whereas my friends mostly have to figure it out on their own. I've been living in singles since freshman year, and my friends have dorm rooms that are slightly larger than mine, but with four students living in it. They don't even have shower in the dorm and have to go to a communal facility. Their bathrooms are dark, dirty and don't have bowls (squat toilets), while ours are some of the cleanest I've seen.

On the other hand, I pay almost $50k in tuition alone each year, while my friends pay <$1000. I pay $8k a year for housing, and my friends pay ~$150, per year

[ollebro]

I went to college in Sweden and had all that you had, I didn't pay anything. I received about 1000-1500$ a month for attending school from the government.

[swimfar]

I know Europe is a diverse place, but I've studied at three universities in Europe (Germany and France) and at each of them I often had problems with computer access due to the labs being used for classes. This was an issue even as a graduate student.

Access to professors outside of class was also difficult. Where I was at in Germany, the professors would have about 4 hours per week scheduled where they were available for help or questions. At the end of each open-hours block they would go out into the hall and tell the 5-10 people waiting in line to see them that they would have to come back in a couple days. Compare this to the university I was at in the US where professors would practically beg students to come talk to them about homework assignments, lectures, etc.

I also had much greater autonomy in the US when it came to lab work (and course selection as well). They trusted us to use the equipment. As an undergrad in the US we were shown how to use an SEM and then left alone with it to play around with it and try different options, scan different objects, etc. For the SEM lab I had as a graduate student in France we watched a technician use the machine and tell us about what you can do with it and that was it. I felt like we were being treated like little kids. There weren't even any machine shops, 3d printers, soldering irons, etc. available for students to use.

In the experience that I had, the US university had much higher quality facilities than the ones I was at in Europe (I'm not talking about the lecture quality here). Certainly, one could argue that the increased cost isn't worth the increased quality, but I did notice a big difference between those four schools.

[drabiega]

My experience at a State School in the US sounds more like your European experiences than your US experience.

[dikaiosune]

I like the way Sweden does many things, but:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Tax...

It's political suicide in the US to raise taxes in any significant way, and so we suffer through the nonsense we've got.

[xorcist]

It's important to put numbers in perspective. Every US citizen spends $98k over their expected lifetime on the military, for example. An average Swedish citizen spends $46k on state funded university and higher education over their expected lifetime (which is only slightly higher).

That said, it should be obvious that the Sweden model doesn't suit conditions in the US (one is a small country in Northern Europe, one is almost a continent), but one should be able to discuss these things without the straw man of how state spending is impossible in the US. After all, military spending is possible, and that is probably the most socialistic system of them all, in the sense that it is state planned and politically mandated.

[dikaiosune]

If you look at the historic context of military vs. education spending, I don't think it's a straw man at all to point the difficulty of raising non-defense spending. In fact, the difficulty of raising taxes in the US is just put in more stark lighting when in perspective of the amounts spent on the military vs. everything else.

I'm not saying state spending is impossible, just that raising it for non-military items is exceedingly difficult. That's not the only reason why the US university system is worse in x way than y country's, but when we're discussing public funding of universities we have to acknowledge the political and fiscal realities of trying to do something about it. I say that when accounting for those realities and the difference in public funding levels for education and other programs, it's no surprise that we have students in debt.

[federico3]

Great datapoint! Source?

[xorcist]

I took the military speding figures from worldbank.org, and higher education spending from the Swedish national budget for 2015. Population and life expectancy figures from Wikipedia.

[adventured]

Sweden also doesn't have universities that match up to the US when it comes to a ~$50k tuition tier. $50,000 per year is a lot, and buys you access to the best universities on earth, most of which are in the US. Harvard's tuition is around $44,000 for example.

[xorcist]

Sweden is a country with the population of New York, but have one (sometimes two) universitites in a global top ten ranking of their respective subjects. So if you must compare to something US, do it with a large city.

[rayiner]

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki....

Sweden has two universities in the top ~100. Boston has three. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh have two, mostly in the top 50.

[xorcist]

That's because your source is coarse grained. Look at a list of specific subjects, in my example medicine (and an old list of maritime biology institutions, hence "sometimes"), and you'll find the counter examples.

But hey, I'm cherrypicking data here, so it's not relevant to anything else than as a counter data point to a very broad and wrong statement.

[benihana]

How about don't compare a European nation to a large city, do it to the US equivalent: A state.

[fwn]

While this might be true for maybe population size or territory, the govermental structure is completely different. ..also there are huge cultural differences (language; diff. social path dependencies etc.)

I don't think the similarities justify comparing US states to European countries.

[xorcist]

No, you shouldn't. European nation states bear little resemblance to federal states, neither historically, culturally or economically.

The point was not that comparisons between states and cities are somehow more valid, but to illustrate that the differences in higher education are most likely due to the vast population difference.

[endzone]

but obviously university rankings are only weakly related to the quality of undergrad education. US universities are the "best" at research... not hard to understand

[mungoman2]

Well you get $350 "for free", the rest is a loan.

[Elv13]

To give a comparison closer to the States, in Quebec (Canada), I paid about 5k (3 semester per year, one as paid internship) in tuition plus ~10k for a ~450ft^2 apartment. Obviously I will pay all my life in taxes, but that make higher education much more accessible and less intimidating that it could be elsewhere.

As a modern western state, the main source of GDP require college educated workforce, so it probably make sense to invest "other peoples money" into it. It is of course totally debatable if this is good or not. Not all college degree will yield a direct return on investment (/whisper social science, art, education) but those people are (mostly) required anyway to provide services to the others. This is a society choice. Some places let education be driven by the market while other see it as a public service (same for health care, electricity or running water). As this example show, there can be inefficiencies even when university are run like corporations.

[IkmoIkmo]

> As a modern western state, the main source of GDP require college educated workforce, so it probably make sense to invest "other peoples money" into it.

Absolutely. There are some issues though with brain drain. Look at Germany, free education. Or Norway, you pay like $500 a year. I have friends who went to study there and then left and never came back.

And it's not inexpensive. Here in the Netherlands we pay about $2k a year on tuition, but the gov pays the uni an additional $10k or so per student. And then the unis get various extras from the government, so they have about $15-20k to work with for tuition per student. In any of these three countries, most or all of that comes from the government, who don't have a way of keeping that investment locked in to their countries.

Which is why a lot of countries nowadays keep tuition high, but create language scholarships. Study in Korea? Gotto pay up. Unless you want us to pay, great, we'll even pay you a monthly stipend, but you need to take this 4 year Korean language course and it's intensive, if you fail, you lose your scholarship.

4 years later, that person will be speaking Korean and tied to Korea for the rest of their lives. Even if they won't live their, they might go back to Europe and do business with Korean companies, make investments, etc. That's a much more sensible investment for them.

The second issue is that of cashflow. Investments are great, but paying $50k into an 18 year old, will start to pay off maybe a decade or two later in taxes on average. That's an easy decision for Sweden, it's a tricky decision when you're dealing with austerity measures, unemployment, failing healthcare, crime etc right now, something a lot of countries are facing.

But yeah beyond those issues, I'm damn glad I live in Europe, my education has been amazing. $10k student debt, got a 4y degree here, and did an exchange, a minor and summer school in 3 other countries (Quebec, too by the way :)!

[nicholasdrake]

i think that's why you can't have western governments investing in students, because they don't have any money.. in fact my friend and i have applied to this yc batch with our idea for a 'vc firm for people' where you pay for students university education in return for a % of their annual income (i.e. in return for taxing them).

[pjc50]

Private debt slavery! This is a terrible idea. Moreover, your cost of capital cannot possibly be lower than the interest rates paid by Western governments.

[nicholasdrake]

haha u have hit the nail on the head re: our bad pr problem..usually people go for indentured servitude rather than all the way to slavery though haha...

we think equity>debt for students because a) in bad times your debt is lower (% of income vs flat payment) and b) longer time scale allows transfer consumption from middle-age to years immediately after graduation

re: western government interest rates that's probably true, the uk has lost a lot of money on their loans which have very nice terms & conditions.. the US market still has a large private loans component which we think we can beat (for reasons above). to be honest though we are probably thinking more about the developing world (india, china etc.) where student loan financing isn't as available (particularly true at a graduate level)

finally, the x-factor is on the investor side where we can allow investors to bet on industries without having to be on a specific company because the income stream of someone working in a given industry is a better long-term proxy than a company in that industry (particularly if it's a new industry)..

[cowsandmilk]

Some might even argue more run-down buildings allow for better science. When you believe your building is cramped and in bad shape, changing its form slightly to get an experiment working is more acceptable. Cutting holes in walls, exposing beams to add supports for chemical reactors, and general experimentation. At least that's the idea behind the fetishization of Building 20 at MIT[1-3].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/31/science/last-rites-for-a-p... [2] http://newsoffice.mit.edu/1998/b20main-0401 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_20

[morcheeba]

The author of the article is from Boulder... they just started on a $63M rec center renovation and they have a pool in the shape of a buffalo. There are only 30,000 students, so right there is $2,000 per student on a portion of the facilities that isn't involved in teaching.

http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_25916902/cu-boulder-bu...

[IkmoIkmo]

It an expense, not necessarily a cost. Their property values just rose for example. Over time the equipment ages which leads to breaking, and replacement because it's not state of the art anymore. If you expect it to last 20 years, then you can write off 1/20th every year, which are your actual costs. Meaning it's $100 per student per year, which is reasonably cheap because those are essentially your costs to have state of the art equipment available to you every year. Things like heating & lighting, employees, cleaning etc is added to that, but it's mostly independent from renovation as you had to pay that anyway before you renovated. It might go up a bit, it might go down because of more sustainable engineering for example.

There's a lot more to it, of course, don't get me wrong. But $2k per student for non-teaching isn't quite the truth, either.

But I think the notion of building decent public facilities and amenities is one of the best things we ought to do. It sadly doesn't happen often. But universities do it, libraries, rec centers, I think it's great. It has to happen in a smart way, of course, I don't support some of the ridiculous over the top projects you sometimes see. A pool in the shape of a buffalo, ugh, great example right there. Sadly it's often in the pursuit of collegiate sports and not really providing awesome amenities and facilities to the general student body. Reminds me of the piece about Alabama in this great Last Week Tonight [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX8BXH3SJn0

[sp332]

If you're not planning to sell property, high property values are bad because they just increase your taxes. There's no upside.

[jsprogrammer]

A rec center lasts for more than a year doesn't it? I'm sure there are (will be) ongoing maintenance costs, but I doubt they are also $63M/year.

[r00fus]

A $63M rec center doesn't maintain itself. I'm sure the yearly operational costs are much larger than what they had before as well.

[mdasen]

Economists sometimes talk about different types of quality: actual quality and perceived quality. There has been a lot of spending that has been directed toward perceived quality at American Universities. That includes a lot of new buildings, a lot of maintenance, etc. In a certain way, it becomes a race to spend more. The more you spend, the better students you can attract, the better your status is and your alumni and industry donations are. All of this spending to entice 16 and 17 year olds to choose your university over another based on a cool study area, the prospect of free concerts, lots of student life staff to talk to and handle your needs, etc.

In the United States, university education is extremely hierarchical. If you're fairly well off (parents earning $120,000/year), you can easily get a free education at one of the top schools. However, go to a school closer to 25th and there will be fees even for those whose parents earn less. I don't think most countries third-level systems are nearly as hierarchical. As such, it's a big deal for universities to compete for students (and students to compete for universities) in the US.

A lot of that probably comes from American universities being completely independent of one another. I mean, sure, Imperial College London is independent from University College London, but they're ultimately responsible to the UK government. I don't think unbridled spending to court students from one government institution to another (via perceived, not actual quality) would really be looked upon well.

To be fair, the lack of coordination can also put American universities in an awkward position. As soldiers came home and took advantage of the GI Bill, universities greatly expanded their capacity to teach them. As that large increase in students dropped off, universities were left with a lot of excess capacity. A lot of the increase in spending can be traced back to that period as universities tried to keep their enrolment steady.

Ultimately, American universities are a combination of school and summer camp. Generally students live in university-owned dorms, they eat in university-owned cafeterias, and go to university-sponsored social events. All of that costs money, but in a competitive environment where students travel across the country to go to the university they perceive as best (that let them in), those costs are necessary from the university's perspective.

[baking]

>If you're fairly well off (parents earning $120,000/year), you can easily get a free education at one of the top schools.

It is great that Stanford was able to offer free tuition (not free education) to whatever portion of the 2,144 students they admitted this year had family incomes under $125,000 and "typical assets" but it is definitely not easy to get into Stanford. As a family with $140,000 in income and what I would consider to be typical assets (modest home, minimal retirement and college savings) we received no financial aid offers of any kind and were expected to be able to pay $65-70,000 per year at private colleges.

Luckily, my daughter found an excellent out-of-state public college that she loves and should graduate debt-free. Unfortunately, too many of her high school friends fell into the private school trap and are now either paying outrageous tuition or are stuck in a mediocre in-state public school.

To any parents now making college visits, ignore those press releases, insist that you visit as many public campuses as you do private ones, and that your children apply to as many public schools as they do private schools and you won't live to regret it.

[eric_the_read]

There is some evidence that where you actually attend university doesn't matter. This paper in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests that what matters is where you apply, not where you actually end up going: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekru...

[JabavuAdams]

Wow, that's steep! I would expect a dual-income family making about $140k total to be able to pay $25k/year for schooling without making other lifestyle adjustments, but 65k-70k for one student -- that's outrageous!

[dikaiosune]

Rose-colored version: Competition! Freedom! Murrica!

On a more serious note, it's also worth noting that 16/17 year-old students aren't making their decisions in a vacuum. Parents may be on the actual campus once (if at all) before the student attends, and I think that perceived quality measures are as much targeted at winning parental approval via first impressions as they are targeted at winning over high school kids on cool factor.

[jkestner]

Those are the things that administrators care about. Can't bring in more money if you don't have good-looking brochures. Like a lot that administrators do (including replicate themselves), it's considered a marketing expense. Because building reputation takes too much time.