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Bloomberg, WSJ: Student Aid Increases Tuition
retroworks writes "Bloomberg News makes the case that when the federal government offers tuition assistance, students apply to more expensive colleges, giving the institutions an incentive to raise tuition and a disincentive to lower it. (The Wall Street Journal has a similar article, but it's paywalled.) This reminds me of the debate over President Reagan's cuts to the Pell Grant program in the 1980s. MIT's Campus Paper 'The Tech' quoted the MIT administration as saying it had 'no idea what really will occur' when Reagan's proposal to cut Pell came to Washington. So the question is, 25 years later, do we know now? Did cuts to federal tuition assistance hurt the education of the lower income students? Did increases to Pell grants create more opportunity? Or is federal money the milkshake, and students are just the straw?"
Given the fact that federal funding for college has steadily declined the last 30 years, state funding even more, and college tuition has continued to rise by leaps and bounds, would clearly demonstrate that no federal funding does not increase tuition.
If I am a school and I have learned that students can borrow $60,000 a year from the government, then I am sure as hell I will raise my prices to get htat "free money".
No, not at all. If you had a full campus while charging $5K/yr, you'll raise your tuition to $65K a year, because you'll collect the "free" $60K plus your campus full of students obviously can afford $5K/yr.
Not one extra person will attend (duh, the out of pocket cost remains $5K) and not one extra person will not attend (free money for all !!!)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
3) States will disproportionally cut university budgets to solve statewide budget shortfalls, effectively shifting the burden of state indigence to university students (intended?). If a state can't afford pensions for state park employees, the temptation is to plunder university budgets because students will make up the difference with their own debt. So indirectly, students are now paying for pensions of state employees, and the state stays in the black (or less in the red).
Let's look at what you said practically. "Your" tax dollars huh? Given the percentage that goes over to military spending, police, fire, libraries, infrastructure and public works, public schools, health initiatives, financial/economic initiatives, etc, only a tiny tiny amount is left for college. Of that, most aid comes in the form of student loans. So suggesting your personal tax dollars go to pay for leeches is quite misleading, since it is more like your personal tax cents.
Further, what major won't make you more productive? I studied philosophy, and now have a job as a web developer. Looking at people I've worked with, I see art history, psych, even sociology majors. A given major isn't bullshit (though some can be more than a bit funny sounding) - it comes down to how effective a given student is at taking advantage of what they chose to learn.
I also busted my ass and lived in squalor to graduate almost debt free. Honestly, I wish I'd signed on the dotted line and lived on loans to graduate three years earlier than I did. At this point of my life, it would have been worth it. Instead I missed the best years of the dot-com era, got reamed in the housing bust, and now I'm starting a family in my late 30's.
In hindsight, it wasn't really a head start.
:wq
I'll help!
I live in Huntsville, Alabama which is a smallish city (~180k pop) surrounded by a couple of semi-affluent suburbs. Surrounding the suburbs are a very poor rural area dotted with small towns. The area (as well as most of the state, and most of the region) has an extremely low cost of living. Minimum wage is at the Federal minimum of 7.25.
I have two brothers and a sister who all live here and make at or near minimum wage at various jobs. They have occasional raises that seem to add up to around $1.00 per hour each year or so.
Working full-time at minimum wage you end up with a take-home of less than $1000 per month. The cheapest 1bdrm apt you can really hope for is around $350/mo. (You can potentially save some money here by playing the roommate lottery.) Utilities will bottom out at around $50/mo on average if you are careful. The area is very spread out and not pedestrian friendly, and we have very poor public transportation here. Gas is around $3.10/gallon right now (it recently dropped from around $3.70 or so, where it had been holding for a couple of months) so depending on the commute you'll be spending somewhere in the ballpark of $100/mo or so on gas.
So, after gas and housing you're looking at $500 to live off of each month. This is just barely manageable from my experience. Frugality is a must in this situation, and medical bills are basically un-payable. Since most retail and other min-wage jobs are only part-time, lots of people end up working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Luckily this area was not hit as hard by the recent economic unpleasantness, so there are still lots of low-end jobs to go around. Anyone who has student loans, car payments, or any other significant bills is pretty much on rice-and-beans-with-the-lights-out at this income level.
Loans are arms and the lenders are arms dealers. The people who graduated ahead of you bought the bullets and effectively shot you out of the economy. They effectively pit us against eachother when competing for any big ticket item: house, car, education, etc.
Just as in war, a combatant sometimes wins; but arms dealers always win.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?