Reddit reviews Why Does College Cost So Much?

This is an extremely complicated question, but I'll do my best to make it as simple as possible.

Some over simplified reasons.

• It's worth it. College graduates on average earn approximately $800,000 more in their lifetime than non-college graduates even when you adjust for lost income by going to college and the cost of college itself. There are other benefits such as better health and higher voting rates as well.
  
• People are willing/have to pay for it. The students that pay the most money, middle and higher income families demand a lot for the price of college. They expect state of the art everything and this costs a lot of money. Those costs are then passed on to the customers. Then lower income students who may not choose these schools are forced to pay them because in order to stay open, colleges cater to the students who pay the most money.
  
• Public colleges are receiving less and less money from state and federal governments all the time. In fact, the University of Virginia thinks it should go private because it's [not worth it] (http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/u-va-should-break-some-ties-with-state-panel-says-in-preliminary-report/2013/09/11/e45cb586-1961-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html) anymore to receive money from the state. Since public colleges are raising their costs, this allows private colleges to raise their rates respectively.
  
• Not only do publics receive less money, but federal and state grants to private colleges have not risen for many years and in many cases they have actually shrank. For example, 10 years ago, the Iowa Tuition Grant was $4,000 per year per student. Then it was $3,500 per year. Now it is back up to $5,000 for this year, but Iowa is having a great tax year, so it may not last.
  
• Technology has not caused the cost of college to go down because it is hard to increase the efficiency of colleges and education in general. The teaching model has not changed substantially since education first started whenever humans first started (at least in an economic sense). You still have one professor teaching several students. Additionally, most students are drawn to schools that promise small class sizes and a low student to teacher ratio. In truth, these are good things, but they are also expensive things.
  
• In fact, this book purports that maybe technology is actually one of the big drivers of the increasing cost of college. Highly recommended book.
  
• Additionally, the administrative budgets at schools are increasing for a variety of reasons. Some of it is because colleges are required to do a lot of reporting to the federal government and they have a lot of things to track, but most of it is due to providing services for students. As the US pushes more and more students into college, many of them are simply unprepared for the rigors of college. These students need a significant amount of support to succeed. In addition to that, there are people to help you register for class, run an intramural sports program, supervise the students in the dorms, help navigate the world of study abroad options, find an internship and a job for after college.
  
  Many of the people in this thread are claiming that student loans are the cause of why college are so expensive. The research to support this simply isn't there. In fact, the median debt of students who graduate from college has not gone up at the same rate as the median cost of colleges. In fact, loans are harder to come by and are more expensive than 10 years ago for students. When I graduated in 2005 from college, my Stafford loans had an interest rate of ~2% and there was a 0% origination fee. Now Stafford Loans have an interest rate of 4.66% and an origination fee of ~1%. Additionally, please read this about the rising cost of college and how it is not due to grants and loans. There is simply no correlation between increasing student loans and increasing college costs. The cost of college goes up even when loan levels remain flat.
  
  I also highly recommend that you read this article.

Why Does College Cost So Much? is a great book

>School prices are so high because government guaranteeing loans

Thats a myth perpetuated by the right-wing to try and destroy academia (particular to attack tenure so they can politicize college education) because education is bad for the right-wing.

>Much of what is written about colleges and universities ties rapidly rising tuition to dysfunctional behavior in the academy. Common targets of dysfunction include prestige games among universities, gold plated amenities, and bloated administration. This book offers a different view. To explain rising college cost, the authors place the higher education industry firmly within the larger economic history of the United States. The trajectory of college cost is similar to cost behavior in many other industries, and this is no coincidence. Higher education is a personal service that relies on highly educated labor. A technological trio of broad economic forces has come together in the last thirty years to cause higher education costs, and costs in many other industries, to rise much more rapidly than the inflation rate. The main culprit is economic growth itself.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/0199744505


Additionally the trend of states reducing their contributions to public schools have exasperated the manner. Again this is something driven by the right.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-College-Cost-Much/dp/0199744505

What? That book wasn't published and reviewed? Are you kidding me?

You think GAO doesn't review their analysis? Are you serious?