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And, to note- students can opt out of cost disease. This isn’t a ‘no starter homes available’ situation. You can live with your parents, go to community college for 2-3 years, and then transfer to podunk state school of commuting for 1-2 years, and get a degree for like 1/8 the cost. This is the less popular option.
At some point, controlling the student loan problem requires either underwriting that will automatically get blown up into an algorithm based on throwing money after Shaniqua or reinstitution of sumptuary laws. Simply… cap the conditions available on campus. Require food halls to serve exactly the same food as the nearest prison, ban individual dorm rooms(and for an added bonus, require one-locker-room-per-floor level facilities), prevent the use of student loans for off campus expenses, etc. You want better than that, you pay with cash.
You can also opt out of a lot of problems by going and living in the woods like the Unabomber. Why are people complaining about inflation when they could simply opt out to go sharpen some sticks and hunt rabbits in the forest? There are incredibly severe outcome differences between someone who goes to Harvard or Yale as opposed to podunk state school of commuting and I feel like it is dishonest to claim that they're equivalent.
I, at 17, toured three local universities that obtained a substantial number of their students transferring from community colleges. These were large podunk state schools, and they were quite clearly 2-star resorts with colleges welded on. Oddly, the tour focused on things like having a five star chef(this is probably less impressive than it sounds) in charge of the dining hall and nice, new dorms with individual bathrooms.
The median student taking on debt for a bachelors degree is not going to Harvard, they’re going to a second or third tier public school. The difference between a state flagship’s commuter school satellite campus and podunk state, the hotel in nowheresville, is functionally nonexistent on your resume; I would actually imagine it runs the opposite direction when there is one.
This isn’t a ‘dodge rising gas prices by becoming Amish’ idea. This is a ‘you’re going to podunk anyways, just don’t party while you do’.
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The outcome differences are primarily due to the kinds of people who go to podunk state vs harvard. Once you control for that, the differences are pretty slight.
I think the estimate of the breakdown of the private returns to college education from Bryan Caplan (not a huge fan of the status quo) was around 50% ability bias ("the kinds of people who go to podunk state vs harvard"), but also 40% signaling (even if you're smart enough to go to Harvard, can you prove that to employers without the diploma?) and 10% human capital (Harvard actually does have some classes that teach you more because they don't need to worry about the slower kids keeping up). If he's right then you still want to steer clear of podunk; the net return to education is still too huge to throw away half of it lightly.
You're misrepresenting Caplan. That's his breakdown of returns to college education vs a high school diploma, not Harvard vs Podunk state.
Sure, but when I can't take a derivative I'll still prefer a finite difference over nothing. How would you think those estimates change when we reduce the delta?
I think the answer depends on what you think is the margunal value of Harvard over Podunk state, which is the very question we are discussing.
We were discussing ability bias vs human capital - did anyone bring up signaling before I did? It seemed a very weird thing to leave out of the conversation, so I thought it was surely worth mentioning that it could be nearly as large an effect as ability bias despite falling on the opposite side of the "should I go to a cheap college" question.
But as long as I'm bringing up weird things to leave out of the conversation - what's your source for "Once you control for that, the differences are pretty slight"? I was providing what seemed to be a relevant counterexample to an assertion not yet tied to data, but if you do have more relevant data then that's a trump card - just go ahead and play it?
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A lot of that is path dependant though. 20 years ago you could control costs by keeping with cheap low level accommodations and facilities and declining to build luxury. But now, the luxury is built. What are you gonna do, demolish it to build shitty dorms? You can stop building more luxury and try to bend the curve back down, but you are starting from the new high level, getting back to old low level may be impossible at this point.
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The problem is that parents want their kids to leave and are happy to pay the tuition, availing themselves of the generous aid and other programs too. It's a win for students and parents. Boomers and gen-x parents have tons of $ specifically earmarked for college.
Ok, so they do, but if you cap amenities available to students, then colleges have to compete on price. Or on educational quality, which unlike luxuries is a reasonable thing to spend more money on.
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