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Comment by valuearb | Hacker News Reader

The sad thing is that all higher level education in the U.S. is for profit. 30 years ago you could go to an average state college for $4,000 a year, that cost is roughly 10x as much.

Where has all the money gone? Take a look at the salaries of school presidents, administrators, coaches, even professors, especially their pensions and benefits programs. Its as if all our non-profit institutions are really profit hungry corporations in disguise, and the "shareholders" are the administrators who control them.

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It's not the administrative salaries so much as the bloat. Look at the org chart of any major state school 30 years ago compared to today.

Coach salaries tend to be eye-catching but they are generally entirely funded by the athletic department and its supporters, not tuition or state funds.

> Coach salaries tend to be eye-catching but they are generally entirely funded by the athletic department and its supporters, not tuition or state funds.

This is only true at a small number of schools. Most subsidize the athletics department through fees they levy on students in addition to the normal tuition.

This is correct, in any given year there are less than 10 schools whose athletic departments are profitable. However, this simple fact ignores the positive economic impact that athletic programs can have on a university that aren't purely P&L in the department.

Athletic department revenues are entirely property of the school, and partly funded by mandatory student fees. The NCAA could cap coaches salaries at $250,000 and the line of qualified candidates to become a NCAA coach would still be out the door for every school.

Instead they allow coaches and athletic directors to coordinate a conspiracy where they and their employees get to skim all of the profits of the program for themselves. When you are "forced" to pay your AD over a million dollars a year, that's the best possible thing to justify paying the president far more.

Public school tuition doesn't cost 40k a year. An employee is not the same as a shareholder.

Your right, it's only about $30k per year. And an employee isn't the same as a shareholder, unless that employee controls a non-profit, runs it to make substantial profits and skims those profits by paying themselves and their cronies massive salaries. Go look up the salaries of your state school President, Administrators, Athletic Director, Football and Basketball Coaches, and Professors.

I dunno about elsewhere, but in-state tuition in Texas is no more than $10k (varies by school, but none are above that). Still too high, but it's not yet at private-school levels of absurdity.

Look at total cost of attendance. Schools could set tuition to zero, but require students to pay $40,000 a year for "room, board and books" and it wouldn't actually make tuition cheap.

Tuition + fees (possibly + books, but that is highly variable from term to term and generally substantially less than tuition) is the correct way to evaluate the cost of higher education. Room & board is generally optional at state schools (there are a few exceptions).

My institution's in-state tuition + fees are about $9K/year. The TX state university I taught at for two years was similar.

well said and so true.

There's no way state schools currently cost $40k. Maybe $15k.

Easy federal aid money certainly helps push up the price tag. It's effectively a subsidy.

UO -> In-state: $26,000, out of state: $49,000

OSU -> In-state: $26,000, out of state: $45,000

PSU -> In-state: $30,000+, out of state: $43,000

MSU -> In-state: $27,000, out of state: $51,000

UM (Michigan) -> In-state: $29,000, out of state: $60,000

UM (Miami) -> $64,306

UM (Miami) is actually a private school, and not state-run.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/university-of-miami-153...

These prices look like they include room and board and such after spot checking a couple, e.g. http://undergrad.osu.edu/cost-and-aid/basic-costs gives in-state tuition for an incoming freshman of 11K per year.

You can argue that talking about tuition alone is misleading, but it wasn't included 15 years ago either, and yet 10K/year for in-state is around where things were back then too, IIRC.

11K is still a lot of money. I paid for all of my school on my own as I went through it, but if it was 11K I would have had to get loans!

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