For the record, I’m not American nor live in the US, but I have a 19-year-old son who started attending the University of Chicago this year, studying economics. Just the tuition itself is $70k. My husband and I are lucky enough to be able to afford it - I still believe it’s an outrageous amount of money to attend college.
because america is the land of profit over humans. its just that simple.
its ingrained in the entire country. if some rando at the top isnt profiting, it must be killed. its the problem with healthcare. its the problem with government (congress). its the reason we are entrenched in a 2-party hellscape.
And if the university of Chicago is that “Chicago school of economics” then this kid is going to come out the other end repesting close to what you said, but as a positive. :(
Is that just America though? Are there other countries where profit isn’t king?
I’m pretty confident the French wouldn’t stand for “rule by profit”
I’m afraid I don’t have good news…
I’d put money down to Kickstart a documentary series where we fly American Redditors (and Lemm users) to Europe to film their reaction when they see that, yes, they still need to pay for items with money (and perform labor to get the money! 😱😱)
I mean, I’m aware that France has a capitalist economy. I mostly meant to say that Americans let capitalists step all over them in many ways that the French would riot over
The French aren’t the bastions maintaining rights they seem to be known as. Yes, they’ll throw a tantrum over political changes they don’t like, but late stange capitalism is still pretty bad and the average store is extremely bad for the standard competition that would favour the individual. Any mention of “I can get this cheaper at X.” is known to be followed up with “Cool. Fuck off over there then.” In as many words. Returning a faulty item will see the item getting a rigorous inspection to check that it’s still in pristine condition so it can be put back on the shelf to be sold to the next sucker (this is in the large supermarkets, not just the rare shady mom and pop stores). And electricity bills are double customer usage because the primary electricity supplier is owner by the state so they’re “legally” able to add 3 different taxes and their R&D bill to your bill. The telecoms companies do similar, partaking in that fun practice of adding nothing services to your plan you didn’t ask for and then “making things even” by raising your bill. And don’t get me started on the standard for customer support.
Consumer rights are a joke in France and for all of these death-by-a-thousand-cuts capitalist agenda BS practices, the people of France do nothing.
Gotcha, I didn’t know that. Thanks for all of the information!
Honestly, same. I’m so beyond tired of this “free” stuff Americans like to latch onto, not realising how much is stolen from the average Joe and Josephine before it becomes “free”.
not that im aware of.
america was founded on this crazy idea of ‘rugged individualism’. that ‘socialism’ is inherently evil. its every man for themselves, and anyone not rich is so because they arent doing it correctly.
its also the reason why even a class full of dead kindergartners is ok as long as we get to keep our guns.
Because Reagan defunded public secondary education. And then instead of fixing that in the late 90s/early 00s, they made school loans non expungable and federally guaranteed, so schools didn’t need to keep their prices low and competitive anymore.
It always goes back to Reagan…
Jesus Christ, so many people don’t know the real history of what happened while this is the real answer.
To add on to Ronald “Fucking” Reagan defunding universities, he did it because as governor of California he absolutely hated the anti-Vietnam War protests happening on University of California campuses and thought a good way to limit attendance of ‘rabble rousing’ (re: poor) students was to take away their funding. Conservatives nationwide saw this and thought ‘that’s great, we should do that, too.’ and they did.
Thanks Ronnie. You’re the unwanted microwaved dog shit that ruined America 40 years and your stink is still smelled in full force to this day. I didn’t believe in hell, but I hope they made a special one just for you.
Meanwhile, in many other countries, education is government funded and free to all citizens. Having lots of educated people is seen as an asset, not a liability.
This is the real answer I was looking for in the comments.
Edit: it always goes back to Reagan.
Why did unions lose their power? Reagan threatened striking ATC workers with firing if they didn’t return to work immediately. Suddenly striking workers could be fired.
Why did weed become a life sentence drug? Reagan.
Who demonized the poor on welfare, calling them welfare queens? Who is Ronald Reagan, Alex?
Deregulated Wall street, banking and commerce sector, too.
If there’s a glaring problem with the USA, there’s a very good chance it dates back to RR.
BTW Nancy & The Astrologer is a great name for a band
Yep, this needs to be higher. Since student loans are guaranteed and pushed on all students, universities have been spending oodles of fucking money to justify higher tuition costs, which justifies bigger loans that can never be discharged. The banks win, the schools win, the student lose both academically and financially.
Public universities could actually have stricter requirements on who could go to college, because if it’s already funded by taxes, you don’t want to be throwing money away on students who will fail out of the degree path they’re trying to pursue.
Finally, two words: “Legacy Admissions”
While true overall, University of Chicago is an elite private school with a hedge fund sized endowment with vast majority of students coming from families who pay 70k with two checks two weeks before each semester starts.
This how they stay elite.
The government also ramped up the interest rates on student loans while universities increased the price faster than inflation, I paid around 3-4% in 2008, the lowest was around 2.7% in 2020, currently they are close to 7%. The whole thing should be covered by state and federal taxes we’re already paying to subsidize them, but it just keeps getting worse to squeeze every drop of blood from people who weren’t born with a trust fund.
secondary --> tertiary?
Sure, I guess post-secondary is the term usually used
I just wasn’t sure if reagan did anything with HS budgets and how that connected with college prices. That guy was such a cancer on the country. Maybe we should just stop electing shitty actors altogether
Same reason everything in the US is expensive: we have largely unregulated, runaway capitalism which pervades every facet of life. Everything from housing to academia to health care is for profit – not only profit, but for obscene year-over-year increases in profit. Those at the top regularly make money hand over fist even selling basic necessities, and if they don’t continue taking more and more, they’re seen as failures and replaced by one who will.
The cherry on top is that, for the most parts, the citizens no longer have any real power to change any of it.
Around the same time that health care becomes affordable in the US (major hypothetical, of course), it probably means a wind change has occurred such that university costs would also be coming down. But it would be a systematic change.
US universities engage in price discrimination between different students.
For public schools, there is different tuition between in state and out of state students. There are also some state government programs based on merit and financial considerations.
For well endowed private schools, the universities will provide scholarships based on a variety of reasons. For students from rich families, those families are generally paying full price and there generally is the implication of additional donations.
This is the reason. Every public school, like University of Chicago, has non-resident pricing that’s typically two to four times higher than in-state resident tuition. Source: used to work at a state university.
The original idea was probably to encourage people to stay within their state and boost the state economy, but greed from the admins kinda changed the nature of things.
The University of Chicago is private. The University of Illinois Chicago is public. They have the added issue the people definitely use the names interchangeably because they don’t know there’s more than one.
When I worked at the state University, we had lists to check that stuff. Sometimes it’s obvious, other times, not so much. Good catch!
Given that state taxes heavily support higher education, it’s not the craziest idea in the world to give lower tuition to those who’ve been paying those taxes their whole lives.
This is a private school so they don’t get much in the way of direct government funding. State-funded schools are considerably cheaper. I went to Wright State University in Ohio. Right now it’s about $13k/yr in tuition. This is still rather expensive on a global scale.
Why do private schools charge that much? Because people (like you) will pay that much. What about the University of Chicago makes it so that you are willing pay for it? What do you or your son hope to get out of it that a school in your home country (I’m assuming Canada) can’t give him? To compare to Wright State, even for out-of-country students the tuition is less than half of Chicago’s tuition. Is the benefit of going to Chicago worth that much more? If it is, then that is exactly what you’re paying for.
Because people are still paying it. That’s how you set the price of things. If people are paying 70k why would you sell it cheaper?
If you can charge for something mandatory (minimum requirement for a decent job, house, healthcare) then you can set whatever price you want for it. You just need to push it to the limit of what people can finance to keep paying for over their whole lives.
Going to a private university certainly isn’t a requirement, and in-state tuition for public universities is much, much lower (but still too high).
Tuition is also higher for international students.
Depends on the school.
Gotta make indentured servants somehow.
Most community colleges are very affordable, if not free with financial aid. At many state universities, many students who are low income can qualify for free tuition.
side effects of Boomer economic policies and their ignorance regarding the changes they caused
The politicians of the US took massive payouts from the banking industry in exchange for commodifying anything and everything that people need. Back in
20082005, Biden himself took a $250,000 bribe from MBNA to make it illegal to escape student loans even in bankruptcy.MBNA didn’t even exist anymore in 2008. It was bought out and subsumed by Bank of America in 2006.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBNA#Mergers_and_acquisitions
If you have information on that bill/law post it. I’m curious what it actually said.
Good lord you need work on your reading comprehension, or did you just look at the headline and ignore the very first line of the article?
Hunter Biden was working and being paid as a consultant for MBNA and had no direct ties to any kind of lobbying. That’s just what consulting work is. How much was paid never gets disclosed, especially to the public.
Is there other shetchy shit? Sure, but direct bribery from MBNA isn’t one of them and now we’d have to veer off into a discussion of campaign finance and corporate contributions to politicians in a post-citizens United world.
Be accurate in your criticism or nobody will take you seriously.
I’m shocked that you’d make the typical overly generous assessment of actual bribery to excuse any and all of your team. /s
Do some more research. This is just the tip of the fucking iceberg. Biden has a long track record of quid pro quo besides this event that you clearly are purposely looking the other way on.
I could literally show you video of Biden accepting a bribe and you’d find a way to excuse it.
https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/
https://reason.com/2023/09/18/theres-plenty-of-evidence-of-corruption-around-biden/
https://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-relations-with-bank-industry-825
https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/111100/documents/HHRG-116-JU08-20201202-SD006.pdf
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/30/does-joe-biden-have-a-corruption-problem/
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/93954519
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/biden-bankruptcy-president/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/24/20879735/hunter-biden-trump-corruption-outsider
Yup, you 100% need to work on reading comprehension. I never said nothing sketchy happened, actually I explicitly said other sketchy shit did and does happen, I’m saying the specific example you originally pulled did not support your argument.
The article you pulled, in the literal first sentences said that Hunter Biden was paid as a consultant by MBNA in 2005, 3 years prior to the article and that the consultancy, despite being legally above board, doesn’t look good and happened at the same time a bill favoring credit card companies was passed.
That’s not a direct bribe to Joe Biden in exchange for a favorable bill as you described it.
But instead I’m the shill for Biden because you have done a shit job defending your own point with an article that explicitly contradicts your point in the very first sentence. All I did was read the fucking article and point out it doesn’t say what you think it said.
Again be accurate in your criticism, back it up with anything that doesn’t immediately contradict your points because at this point, I highly doubt you even read a single article you posted in your last reply.
Because everybody believes their bullshit snake oil.
Because THOSE schools are expensive.
- IN STATE VS OUT OF STATE -
I went to a SUNY (State university) about 18 yrs ago and it was $3,000/semester. Today it’s $3,500/semester, so it didn’t go up by much. I stayed in state so it was lower for me. If you are not from the state it was $10,000/ semester (still on the lower end). Compare that to other people in other schools taking the same major as me. It was about 20,000/ semester for in state. We all ended up at the same jobs, I just didn’t carry the debt.
For the US, staying in state helps a lot. Unfortunately I think the grand idea of moving away and dorming is pushed onto kids by the media. Another comparison, my wife, who also went to school in the same state as me, went to at a CUNY (City University) and it was $1,800/semester. It was a pretty great school and campus, but not a school you’d see in the movies or tv shows. We both chose to stay within our means and not put a burden on ourselves or our families. Today we are very successful with no debt.
- SCHOOLS AS BRAND -
One more thing that drives price, is that schools are also brands now, and you are paying for that. There is peer pressure to get into schools with better awareness. Same reason a kid would rather wear apparel from nike vs walmart. My niece just started college this year and was brainwashed into picking a school she couldn’t afford. They took out a loan and the school end up being horrible for her. She dropped out during the last semester and I was told all the money spent this year was a wash. She’s now going to end up going to the school her family originally recommended to her. There are plenty of schools in the states that are good and wont cost an arm and a leg.
- CLASS FLUFF -
For the sake of keeping kids in school they pack in so many additional unneeded electives. I think I had to take 11 within my first 2yrs and each of my classes was 3hrs long. Some days I would have 9hrs of class. That is not including the down time in between those clases, so I could be there around 11-12hrs on a single day. If you want to keep a part time job to help pay for college, then that may mean you have to take additional winter and summer classes. In a lot of places this isn’t covered during the regular months so you have to pay for more. This fluff is one of the ways they keep bachelors and masters programs to run for as long as they do and at the prices they do. Some of these schools do run expedited programs where if you have previous electives that transfer over, you can do your degree in half of the time.
learning is just a sidehustle to the sports franchise they run?
Idk why you phrased that as a question as if it isn’t pretty obvious
Because it’s pretty common to turn an obvious statement into a question to make a point to the person asking?