Courtesy of Mish.
I have long been in the camp that the price of education is so expensive as to make college a poor choice for many who attend, and a downright bad choice for those who go heavily in debt for degrees in little demand.
The entire education system is and has been for some time unsustainable. The cost of education keeps rising along with …
- Government aid
- Union contracts
- Pension benefits
- Salaries of coaches
- Competition for the most elaborate dorms
- Fundraising
Dylan Matthews at the Washington Post has a 10-part series called “The Tuition is Too Damn High”. The first seven articles in the series are already available. Part-10 is the writer’s proposed solution.
I have talked about most of the points above except point five. Matthews discusses “dorm competition” in Part VI — Why there’s no reason for big universities to rein in spending.
Freddie de Boer is a grad student at Purdue University, one of Indiana’s flagship public research institutions. Purdue has a new gym – excuse me, a new “sports center,” the France A. Córdova Recreational Sports Center, to be exact. When de Boer went to check it out, he found treadmills that each featured a TV and an iPod dock, a bouldering wall and a 55-foot climbing wall, a spa with Jacuzzi function that can fit 26 people, six racquetball courts, and a “demonstration kitchen” for cooking lessons.
The Córdova Center wasn’t an expense that needed to be paid for. It was an expense made because it could be made, because the nonprofit university rewards those who spend money, not those who save it.
I suggest the problem with the education system is largely that of government throwing more money at the problem. Just as hundreds of affordable housing programs raised (not lowered the price of homes), the same happened in the education system.
Throw in union graft, pensions, sports, and you have the problem in a nutshell. The solution is simple.
Three-Part Solutions
- Stop all student aid programs
- Increase competition via accredited online programs
- End the preposterous pension plans of educators and administrators
Of my three proposals, number two above is now at hand, in the form of more accredited online education, at reputable institutions, giving advanced degrees at affordable prices.
The MOOC That Roared
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