
What's Really 'Immoral' About Student Loans - lordgeek
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324688404578541372861440606-lMyQjAxMTAzMDIwNzEyNDcyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email
======
dajohnson89
It is criminal that serious student-loan reform isn't on the table. As a
recent graduate making monthly payments towards a 5-figure principal, I say
fuck capping the interest rates. Please cap tuition and fees.

Don't give me that BS about how universities need the money.

During undergrad, I squatted in a 600 sq. ft. apartment shared with 3 other
people. I seriously doubt my health is unaffected by the mold, mildew, vermin,
etc. I had to live with every day. Across the street was the president's
mansion(!). He had a team of gardeners, fountains, a gilded mailbox, and some
pretty nice carS in the driveway. His army of administrators never worked a
minute after 5:00, as evidenced by the steady stream of Bimmers, Benzes, and
Lexuses that poured out of the administrative building's parking lot every day
at 5:01 pm. Oh BTW, their building was the only one on campus with glass
doors, bronze handles, oak furniture, marble floors, etc.

Trim the fat, and make the university answer to a more sane market force.

~~~
dnautics
how about making academic debt dischargeable without question during
bankruptcy - so that the school is 100% on the hook for the balance of the
funds if it educates the student poorly and can't get them a job, instead of
keeping them in (albeit voluntary) virtual slavery to service their debt?

Yes, interest rates would go up, to cover the risk of defaulters, but then
only serious students would go to college.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Schools would immediately close departments that tend to graduate low-paid
folks -- humanities, acting, psychology, history, anthropology, all gone. Not
sure if it would be a problem for society because those who actually produce
art tend to learn to do it before college and just spend their time in college
refining, which they could as easily do in clubs and societies without the BS
that goes along with college.

~~~
rdouble
Based on that criteria, wouldn't universities also have to close math,
biology, physics, foreign languages, environmental science, psychology,
architecture, civil engineering, etc?

~~~
dnautics
I'm sure there will be some rich people around who could pay for tuition in
general up front, the departments that generate 'students that can get modest
jobs' might become smaller. Of course, then the supply of educated
mathematicians, biologists, physicists, would get smaller, too, and their pay
will go up, and everything will reach a saner equilibrium.

------
eightyone
For an opposite view point, see the Salon article _Tuition is too damn high_.
It argues for the vast majority of people tuition has increased because
government has drastically cut funds to public education. Not because of Pell
Grants or "easy money". The author has some interesting data, as well.

Here's a glimpse:

"The first step in grappling with the rise in the cost of higher education
requires understanding where students go to school. There are three main
categories — public schools (which include both four-year public universities
and two-year community colleges), private nonprofits (the Ivys, most liberal
arts colleges, etc.), and the for-profits (Kaplan, University of Phoenix,
Corinthian Colleges, aka “career schools”). Here’s the key statistic: Fully 70
percent of the 19 million undergraduates and 3 million graduate students
enrolled in post-secondary education in 2010 attended schools considered to be
in the public sector — by which it is meant that some portion of their funding
comes directly from government."

"The problem: The word “public” doesn’t mean as much as it used to. Direct
state support for public colleges has cratered over the past 10 years, and
really fell off the cliff after the financial crisis. Yes, tuitions have
risen, but not by as much as state and local appropriations for higher
education have fallen. Just between 2008 and 2009, for example, average
tuition revenue at public research institutions increased by $369 per student,
but the loss in state and local appropriations per student was $751.
Similarly, at public community colleges, tuition revenue rose by $113 per
student, while appropriations fell by $488. Since the recession of 2001,
tuition hikes, as exorbitant as they have been, still haven’t kept pace with
the fall in government support."

[http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/tuition_is_too_damn_high/](http://www.salon.com/2012/05/11/tuition_is_too_damn_high/)

~~~
zanny
The article you link touches on it, but before you even consider where
students go to school you must ask _why_ they do. And that is a very vacuous
answer most of the time. I got my CS degree only because my peers said it
would be significantly easier to be consistently employed with a BS even when
it cost me 20k to get.

In reality, young adults don't go to college to learn. They did that for ~15
years (even worse, they did for 15 years by compulsion without much say in the
matter) and the vast majority want to do something else. Most of them are
there for _credentials_ , not knowledge, and that is the problem.

The most important problem here is the necessity to disconnect education from
schooling. The intent of the latter is to cause the former, but the former is
not dependent on being confined to the latter. You can apprentice, you can
self-teach, you can dive in as a high risk newbie in an industry. None of
those involve going to prohibitively expensive summer camps turned annual to
get lectured at.

The Internet enables a lot here - where previously it was very hard to find
like minded individuals interested in participatory group learning about a
subject, now it is stupidly easy, a search away. Learning resources are also
rampant online in what used to be confined to a tome from the local library or
a prohibitively expensive book purchase.

So the third viewpoint is that the problem has nothing to do with how the
government behaves here because it is symptomatic of a baby-boomer irrational
quest to get pieces of paper saying "bachelors" on it for everyone currently
under the age of 30. The solution is to get a significant chunk of the people
currently attending college and accruing these insane debts into more
productive and better directed paths to careers in the things that interest
them without the cultural baggage touting a phd in some field writing on a
chalkboard as the golden goose of learning.

The real, true, bottom of the barrel reason _I_ think this entire debacle even
exists or came about in the first place, and I think it is at the root of most
societal shifts for 30 years, is that the ultra-concentration of capital and
wealth into so few people has dramatically slowed down the productivity engine
of the first world. There is little motivation when you already pull the
strings of international business to invest in risky youth labor, and when you
control a huge chunk of the economy your lack of risk taking on new talent
means huge droves of the population are never given a chance to succeed. It is
safer and (here is the key) more profitable to play games with rigged fiat
money and banks or stocks of fortune 500ers than to actually create goods and
services by growing productivity and creating value.

~~~
jacques_chester
Universities are older than the printing press, older than telegraphs, older
than fast & cheap mass transport, older than radio and television.

To be quite honest I don't see the internet usurping them either.

~~~
greghinch
Are you being facetious? All of those things have been dramatically changed by
the internet. Or are you saying because they are older, universities are
impervious to change?

~~~
saraid216
He's saying that universities have not been significantly changed by the
numerous communication technologies that came after them, and implying that
the Internet does not have a property distinct from those previous
technologies.

~~~
jacques_chester
Right. And I thought I said it pretty clearly:

> _To be quite honest I don 't see the internet usurping them either._

I mean, OK. The internet is a _big damn deal_. But it's not a quantum leap as
the printing press, steam or telegraphs were. It has antecedents in all those
three technological revolutions.

The printing press was the first time knowledge could be cheaply conveyed to
masses of people without needing someone to manually sit there with the
learner and communicate with voice. It totally upended the concept of how
individuals could receive their education. It didn't replace the university.

Steam was the first time that production and transportation could happen
faster than muscle power or wind could move objects. It didn't cause a
meaningful change to the university model.

Telegraphs did to thought and knowledge what steam had wrought in the physical
world. One could be anywhere on earth and communicate to anywhere else on
Earth within the hour. Minutes in some cases. You could use it to form
communities of like-minded learners, and people did exactly that. It didn't
unseat the universities.

For some reason, the concept of a vertically-integrated, physically co-located
community of scholars and students seems _really, really_ hard to shift.
Technologies come along and modify this or that part of it, but students
plucked from Bologna in 1088, from Oxford in 1167, Harvard 1636, Sydney 1850
and so on and so forth would find that the modern experience is broadly the
same beneath all the pizazz.

Students relocate to be near a community of scholars. They pay for access. The
scholars read aloud. The students take notes. The scholars test the students
and write letters of introduction that verify that the student knows the
subject.

What has changed throughout that long string of technological revolutions --
technological revolutions that destroyed the universality of the Catholic
Church in Europe, revolutions that destroyed feudalism and absolute monarchy,
revolutions that totally upended the whole model of the entire world -- is
almost nothing. Hardly any damn thing.

Given that the internet is new only in _degree_ and not in _kind_ , forgive me
for being skeptical that it will do away with such resilient institutions.

------
charlieflowers
I have wondered for a long time now where all the college tuition money goes.

Consider that: (1) the cost of tuition has grown FAR faster than inflation,
and is now sky high, (2) A huge percentage of students need and get student
loans, (3) student loans are one of the few types of liabilities that
bankruptcy can't wipe out.

So "everyone" (speaking loosely) goes to college, and "everyone" gets a loan.
The college gets its money up front, and bears no risk of having that money
taken away. This represents a huge flow of money into universities. Where does
it go from there?

How does college tuition revenue yearly compare to Apple's revenue from
iphones yearly? In the case of Apple, I can see where the money goes ... Apple
employs a huge number of people working on expensive ongoing operations.

What are colleges doing with all this money? Surely all of it is not being
soaked up by overpaid administrators?? A money stream that large ought to have
a big, obvious wake behind it, but I don't know where that money goes. Can
anyone enlighten me?

~~~
rubikscube
Where does it go? Well, some universities apparently are tempted to put it in
a nice slush fund. See the University of Wisconsin as one known example.
[http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/167425/](http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/167425/)

~~~
rubikscube
More reports on one university so far discovered to have a slush fund, the
University of Wisconsin:

UW Slush Fund Exposes Hypocrisy of Liberal Group
[http://mediatrackers.org/wisconsin/2013/04/23/uw-slush-
fund-...](http://mediatrackers.org/wisconsin/2013/04/23/uw-slush-fund-exposes-
hypocrisy-of-liberal-group)

UW slush fund insults citizens
[http://www.beloitdailyneaws.com/opinion/editorial-uw-
slush-f...](http://www.beloitdailyneaws.com/opinion/editorial-uw-slush-fund-
insults-citizens/article_5909b342-acf8-11e2-a407-0019bb2963f4.html)

Outrage grows as University of Wisconsin System admits it 'did not draw
attention' to cash [http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/outrage-grows-as-
uw-a...](http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/outrage-grows-as-uw-admits-it-
did-not-draw-attention-to-cash-r59lh2e-204159081.html)

I wonder how many more state-run institutions of higher education will have
similar scandals in the next few years.

------
kyllo
_Colleges have responded to the availability of easy federal money by doing
what subsidized industries generally do: Raising prices to capture the
subsidy._

Exactly.

This is an American problem though, the Europeans figured out many years ago
that making tuition free for the students is a win-win for society. Everyone
wants to go to college, so just make everyone pay for it, progressively, over
time.

~~~
billsix
I was under the assumption that college is free for students in many European
countries, assuming the student passed certain tests. If those tests aren't
passed, no college. Is that not correct?

~~~
Ihmahr
That is correct.

For example, if you want to study engineering you have to have certain math
skills. Otherwise university won't let you in, no matter how much you pay.

Oh, _free_ college no. But tuition is something like $700 annual in
germany/france. There is no housing or anything.

~~~
dnautics
this is all and good for something like engineering where it is possible and
maybe desirable to set some reasonable, objective standards. What about
something like political sciences? Almost all of the upper-level public
servants in a country like France come from the same school (ecole sciences-
po)... Doesn't this become dangerous? Who gets to be the gatekeeper?

~~~
mordae
Well the entrance tests for Faculty of Philosophy that my close friend
attended have been in the form of interview and they mostly asked about what
authors did you read, what were they trying to say and such. It's actually not
that complicated for people invested in some area (of science, politics,
culture) to spot good candidates when you give them a chance.

Sadly, the quality of education in Czech Republic have degraded significantly
in capitalism. We have gotten rid of Marxism-Leninism but have also let
significantly more people in and set the incentives to produce a lot of
graduates with much less knowledge, with rest of the bulk being thrown out
after 2 years so that the university gets maximum state support.

We are probably going to end up with student loans and lower government
participation, which will ruin our education system completely.

~~~
dnautics
This sounds like a mess. So If I've read the 'wrong authors' (say, bastiat for
a right-wing critique of the government and bourdieu for a left-wing
critique), I'm basically hosed in the interview. Can't have any radical
changers in the public service, now can we...

"the quality of education in Czech Republic have degraded significantly in
capitalism... so that the university gets maximum state support."

I wouldn't think 'university gets maximum state support' to be a shining
example of (free-market) capitalism. If anything, it sounds exactly like what
the original article complains, if only a bit more direct and less sneaky than
channeling the mechanism of subsidy through a convoluted, corrupt, and rent-
seeking banking system.

~~~
gems
I don't understand: there's nothing stopping you from reading what you want.

~~~
dnautics
so, I'll read "Harry Potter" and "see spot run", and be entitled to a position
at the school? There have to be _standards_.

------
hkmurakami
_> A 2010 study by the Goldwater Institute identified "administrative bloat"
as a leading reason for higher costs. The study found that many American
universities now have more salaried administrators than teaching faculty. _

It's not just the number of administrators but also the pay. They tend to make
many times that of actual professors. And there's no question which camp
brings more value to students.

------
javert
Any form of government subsidized education is immoral. The universe doesn't
owe you an education, which, like all values, is inherently expensive, and
must be produced. Neither does society; and neither do I.

This may seem cruel, but it's actually kind. Were it not for government
control of education, education would have already undergone the same kind of
massive transition that has happened to every free-market industry: much
better, much cheaper, much more widely available.

If you want to see what happens to an economic sector as the government
becomes more invasive, look at the finance sector, which is the most
controlled sector in the US, or look at the "federal telecom bureaus" (AT&T,
Time Warner and Verizon).

~~~
chrisrhoden
I really, really wish all objectivists had been born (actually)
underprivileged.

~~~
maxharris
It is better to take cognizance of how things really are rather than how you
really, really wish them to be.

Where you start in life doesn't matter, but how big a jump you make in
improving your lot does, and that's something that's entirely up to you.
Please lay off the Rawlsian stuff - it doesn't square with the things I've
observed in my own life. Nor does it square with the experiences of many of my
friends that started life out poor, and chose to make something of themselves.

At this point, some might say, "you didn't earn your brain/parent's
money/etc." I say that's nonsense, because the entire idea of "earn" arises in
order to distinguish real people who _choose_ to act toward a goal from those
that choose not to. To do that, we have to look at adults - lots of them,
ranging from bums to billionaires, across time and professions, on and on.
Then at young adults, then at small children (to fully see the contrast with
adults). Choice is the crucial thing here: nobody could arrive at the idea of
"earning" or "deserts" or "justice" by studying newborns or fetuses.

Relying on "earn" (which depends on the idea of choice and free will, as I've
indicated above) in a statement intended to undermine the idea of choice and
free will is bogus.

EDIT: I am making some serious points here. Disagree all you want in comments,
but downvoting me reflexively does not refute my argument.

~~~
saraid216
> It is better to take cognizance of how things really are rather than how you
> really, really wish them to be.

> it doesn't square with the things I've observed in my own life.

> To do that, we have to look at adults - lots of them, ranging from bums to
> billionaires, across time and professions, on and on. Then at young adults,
> then at small children (to fully see the contrast with adults).

I like that you've indicated your own confirmation bias right there.

~~~
javert
He's actually doing it the right way: looking at lots of empirical evidence
and forming the right abstractions from it. That's how science is done, and
it's how philosophy _should_ be done.

You are free to present contradictory evidence and conclusions if you think
he's made a mistake.

He's not talking about evidence limited to his personal, one-on-one
interactions. He's talking about all the evidence available to us, about
people in society.

~~~
saraid216
It is better to take cognizance of how things really are rather than how you
really, really wish them to be.

Where you start in life matters. It squares with the things I've observed in
my own life; hardworking people who spend every waking hour working for the
betterment of their friends and family are nevertheless constantly battered by
mischance and bad fortune. I've learned to differentiate the good luck that I
possess in my own life from the bad luck that others have. Despite my
continued work in supporting them with financial aid, useful contacts, and
marketable skills, they are still forced by circumstance to end up destitute.

At this point, some might say, "you didn't earn your brain/parent's
money/etc." I say that's nonsense, because the entire idea of "earn" arises in
order to distinguish real people who choose to act toward a goal from those
that choose not to. And of course, that is the point. None of these things
were earned. This is a basic framing problem[1], and the entire basis of chaos
theory[2]. Initial conditions matter. A proper scientific experiment includes
a control group measured against an experimental group, and both of these
groups are impossible to meaningfully distinguish at the beginning of the
observation. If this is not the case, say because one group is more
intelligent by some accepted measure of intelligent, then the measurement of a
variable, say the application of choice to arrive at earnings, becomes utterly
nonsensical. The causative agent could be either the initial difference or the
experimental variable.

Using simplistic philosophical bases for one's beliefs is tantamount to
unexamined religious dogma and in no way demonstrates any kind of empirical
basis. Furthermore, claiming to have surveyed "bums to billionaires" without
proof is merely, in the sophistic style of javert, a logical fallacy.

But it's cute you two believe you have any grasp of epistemology, rhetoric, or
logic.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)#Exper...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_\(social_sciences\)#Experimental_demonstration)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory)

~~~
maxharris
_Using simplistic philosophical bases for one 's beliefs_

Whoa there - why do you call what I've written "simplistic"?

 _But it 's cute you two believe you have any grasp of epistemology, rhetoric,
or logic._

 _And of course, that is the point. None of these things were earned._

That wasn't my point. Let me put it another way: it is not valid to apply the
concept of "earn" as you do, in a situation where no choice exists. You can't
say that a person has _earned_ his brain, nor can you say that he _hasn 't_.
I've already explained why. This is not some minor epistemological issue that
I'm going to simply let pass.

 _But it 's cute you two believe you have any grasp of epistemology, rhetoric,
or logic._

Please stop with the insults.

~~~
saraid216
> Whoa there - why do you call what I've written "simplistic"?

Because it does not appreciate complexities. This is the danger of
confirmation bias; it reduces a complex reality down to a simple explanation
by dismissing contrary evidence.

> You can't say that a person has earned his brain, nor can you say that he
> hasn't. I've already explained why.

And you're wrong. Your central claim is this: "A person has earned any given X
if and only if this person has made a choice." We can say "A person has earned
any given X" is P and "A person has made a choice" is Q. Thus, the claim is a
simple P <-> Q, which is shorthand for P -> Q AND Q -> P.

Your next claim, however, is "If a person has not made a choice, then this
person has neither earned nor not-earned the given X." This _looks_ like ~Q ->
~P, which is logically valid, but it's not. The claim depends on a statement
which is _completely new_. You've defined a third category of existence.

> Please stop with the insults.

Earn my respect. That's a choice on your part, right?

~~~
javert
> Earn my respect.

This is supposed to be a community where we all respect each other. There is
no excuse to be disrespectful to other people here, especially over
disagreements about politics and philosophy.

If you want to be part of a community where you are free to be disrespectful
to people until they "earn" your respect, you should go somewhere else.

I'm not even commenting on how you made fun of me and maxharris, which is kind
of irrelevant because it doesn't support your argument intellectually. I'm
only talking about your explicit assertion that you don't have to be
respectful as part of the bargain of being in this community.

~~~
saraid216
Such an authoritarian. If you want me to be respectful, then make a choice and
earn that respect from me. What is this, a pg-subsidized respect space? That's
immoral.

~~~
javert
> What is this, a pg-subsidized respect space?

Actually, yes, yes it is.

------
dnautics
I'm surprised the absolute nondischargeability of student loans is not brought
up in the article. This is, ultimately immoral, because that is exactly
(fractional, voluntary, nonchattel) slavery.

The US, to Obama and congress's credit (those who know me know I'm not a huge
fan) engaged in some credit reform in the wake of the 2008-2009 economic
crisis. Credit cards firms were required to allow their customers to
restructure their loans and became obligated to outline the loan payments
afterward, and rotating credit became dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings.
One wonders why college credit hasn't undergone such reforms. Does academia
have that powerful of a lobby?

------
joshuaellinger
Good grief, I always forget how misleading the WSJ is.

"Gov'ment causes those poor helpless colleges to overcharge."

Bullshit.

The growth in the cost of college is tied to big fat administrator salaries.
It is control fraud pure and simple. To paraphrase, the best way to rob a
college is to run one.

~~~
anonymoushn
So you're saying if we didn't have government guarantees on student loans or
any other form of government subsidy, banks would just give 20somethings who
want art degrees $200,000 completely unsecured?

~~~
xyzzy123
> banks would just give 20somethings who want art degrees $200,000 completely
> unsecured?

Of course they wouldn't. That's the idea though. Back-pressure. The idea is
that it would then become unrealistic for institutions to try and charge 200k
for an arts degree which no one can afford, even with loans. This should lead
to lower tuition.

Bear in mind that that what any institution wants to charge is the absolute
maximum the student can borrow, plus any government subsidies or fees they can
extract.

~~~
roguecoder
The demand for college education is still elastic. College loans merely allow
colleges to extract values greater than the student's ability to pay.

~~~
dnautics
and since college loans aren't dischargeable, you get to keep the student in
hock for the rest of their life!

------
ebiester
So.. We make it so that only people likely to pay the loan back get student
loans. Then, we watch as the actuaries figure out that students frompoor
families are the ones who disproportionately pay their loans (since they don't
have the same familial support during and after college.)

So, poor students are disproportionately denied loans, and we continue to see
generational wealth inequality expand.

There are no great solutions, and there are tradeoffs everywhere. However,
leaving it to the market seems immoral too.

~~~
dnautics
why is 'leaving it to the market' immoral? If you think the poor should be
granted preferential financial treatment, then you should reach into your own
pocket and help pay for them. Or help scholarship funds raise money. Or at
least pressure your alma mater to set aside some funds for the economically
underprivileged. If you don't do any of the above, then you don't really
believe in it, do you?

It's also kind of insulting for you to assume 'the poor are the ones who won't
be able to pay back'. In my experience (and it's possible that I had a unique
college experience) it was the students who came from tougher backgrounds that
buckled down, didn't get stupid degrees, or even if they did, managed to pull
decent, well-paying jobs out of college, because they used their education,
and it was the upper class students that were loafers or chose their degrees
in a silly fashion, so in a way, the good education of the less privileged was
subsidized by the poor choices of the rich.

~~~
dnautics
should clarify, my 'unique college experience' was that I went to a fairly
expensive private research university in the US; I strongly suspect that the
waste of time in college cuts across socioeconomic lines at many big box state
schools.

------
MartinCron
You should only be able to use the "principal" pun once per article.

------
joshuaellinger
I just realized my earlier comment on the WSJ being misleading did not really
clear.

He has the facts right but, to get published in the WSJ, he can't point at the
real issue. It is same problems we have the with banks. These institutions
have tons of hidden subsidies. They always will. Subsidized industries behave
differently from non-subsidized ones in general but the WSJ approved solution
is to pretend that it is possible to remove the subsidy.

For public goods (utilities, parts of finance, education), you have to have
government intervention and deal with the side-effects. That means regulation
and rules about what you do with the money.

I don't think the author would disagree when I say that the administrator are
stealing from the taxpayers. But what is 'bullshit' is saying that we just
have to accept it. When people are stealing from you, you deal with it head
on. If they were employees, you would fire them.

I don't have a great answer for colleges but you need to at least let the
administrators know that they are acting immorally. It is not the loan process
that is immoral -- it is the people who are running the colleges.

------
pnathan
College is an interesting situation. It might be argued that collectively we
all have an interest in seeing a more educated society, regardless of the
earning power. It might also be argued that collectively we need to focus more
on not "going to college" but instead focusing on things like "learning a
sustainable trade".

And, for an individual looking to maximize earnings & employment, a bachelor's
in STEM/business is still a really good buy, supposing you didn't go to $$$
SLAC/Ivy League. Whereas subjects that are less fiscally shiny lead their
students into a dark hole of debt.

One solution is to simply collectivize the cost: everyone gets free college.
That's really expensive and without good cost controls, well, is susceptible
to being taken advantage of.

Another solution is to go at colleges with the dieting plan. That's the
current one. IMHO, that's exactly the wrong way to go about it.

Another solution is to aggressively force state schools to cut overhead; i.e.
cut the administrator staff. Well, asking people to fire themselves is sort of
utopian, doncha think? :)

\---

I don't really buy any of the solutions that I currently know about in the US.
My thought is that there are far too many colleges in the US. Too many states
trying to stretch too few dollars over too many campuses. I instead think that
federal funding should go to a select few - perhaps three or four - in the US.
These colleges would be fully free and fully funded by the feds. Professors
would be encouraged to congregate there and focus on having _huge_ departments
where all sorts of research could go on. The overhead per college is so high;
it's considerably more scalable to focus on having a few large campuses than
the small ones everywhere. Each campus requires a mini admin to be set up.
Worse, the larger a department is, the more interesting collisions can happen:
small departments work against this by not having that interesting person to
run into(they are in the other state).

Anyway, that's my undercooked idea to help college education.

Education in the US is, I think, a wreck, and it has a variety of causes.
Among them, the historic anti-intellectualism of Americans, the loss of
historic mission, the rank foolishness of levelling egalitarians, the
shrinking dollars for defense research, etc. More causes could be added.

~~~
purplelobster
About collectivizing costs, you speak as if it has never been tried and you
discount the idea based on your own assumptions that it would be too
expensive? As someone who has gone to university both at a free*(you actually
get money to study) (~top) Scandinavian university as well as a (~top 10) US
university, there is not much difference in the actual education from what I
could tell. Where there's a real big difference though is research. US
universities consistently outspends and outproduces European universities by a
large factor. My theory is that the undergrads are paying for the professor's
research and grad students, but I'm not sure. The money has to come from
somewhere. Either way, neither I nor my parents would ever have been able
afford US tuition + living costs. I took a loan for all the living costs that
were not covered by subsidies, a loan with an interest of about 1.9%, so I
can't even complain about that. My point is that in the US, I would probably
not have been able to afford a decent college, and I think that's a broken
system. Research and fancy campus gyms should not be funded by stepping on
poor undergrads.

By the way, it also seems that student loans for US students mainly consists
of tuition payments. There is rarely any mention of livings costs which I find
curious. Do people just take it for granted that the parents will pay that
part? Myself, after 5 years, I was roughly $50,000 in debt, all of it living
expenses (note, that's only $10,000 a year in a country with high cost of
living). My family didn't (and didn't have to) pay anything to put me through
college. From what I can tell, this is the norm here, students take loans for
their living expenses and parents are not expected to support them.

~~~
pnathan
Traditionally[1], I believe US universities have been funded by the government
to a large degree. The defunding of the universities I believe corresponds to
the ceasing of the Cold War and the dropping of heavy DoD/DoE funding.

My understanding of collectivizing costs is that it's proved extremely
expensive for countries such as Germany and the UK, which are moving towards a
paying model (last I heard). There's also a pyschological effect when you're
paying for your own way vs. someone else paying for it. I'll let someone else
more learned in physchology & motivation research comment on the details, but
the change in mindset does exist. My gut feeling is that its entirely
reasonable for society to generally pay the bulk of the cost of college in
exchange for getting the benefit of an educated society.

If you examine the historical cost of education in the US, the tuition began
its upwards run around 1980 and has not ceased. So did healthcare. I don't
know if there's a connection; and, if so, why. I do know that educational
costs have gone wildly up beyond inflation.

To your aside; my student loans were designed to cover the cost of housing &
life in general.

I'm very sorry that you did have to go into such steep debt for college. I
don't think it's right that higher education costs so very much either. I do
want it reformed, but I don't want it done in ways that simply funnel money
into someone's pockets without lots of people getting a quality benefit.

[1] between 1945 and ~2000

~~~
purplelobster
You don't need to feel sorry for me, that loan is a government loan that every
student is eligible for. The interest is 1.9%, so the government is actually
losing money on it. I pay roughly $900 a year in interest, which is very
manageable with a near 6-figure salary that this education gave me.

I think it's a pretty good system, it's good both for the students and their
parents. Students don't have to rely on their parents (if they are rich enough
to support their children anyway) and parents don't have to save up for years
for tuition and living expenses. It still hurts though, it's not like it's
free to get an education even without tuition and with subsidies and favorable
loans. You also have to think about opportunity cost, you could be making
money for 5 years, but instead you're in school. So I don't think you need the
additional expenses to feel motivated.

------
dale31
Why not just cap the annual payout of federal loans to a reasonable level?
This would surely put downward pressure on tuition.

