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Comment by joeyrideout | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't say paying for something voluntarily is "robbing". Just bad marketing. And yeah, government subsidies inflating costs is a classic outcome.

Demand has also dropped since the quality of post-secondary students has regressed to the mean of society. Schools used to be more selective, and you'd only get in if you were in the upper percentiles of society in terms of aptitude, ability, and work ethic. In the 60s, only 10% of people had college degrees. Now almost any high school graduate can find a university program.

Unfortunately the selective outcome was marketed as achievable to anyone who goes to university, leading to swathes of people forking over money expecting the best result.

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I don't think schools used to be more selective... It seems more like the selectivity shifted from being self-selective (only highly apt/able people would apply) to selectivity on the part of the universities themselves.

My father says when he went to Columbia University in the 80's the acceptance rate was >60%. Nowadays Columbia is 7%. It's a similar story with most other colleges. My university used to accept pretty much anyone and now it's <%20. Not sure how that can be spun to say universities are less selective now. Maybe there are more universities, so some of them are less selective than others were in the past. But if you track the same universities over time, they have vastly decreased acceptance rates over time.

The state school I went to was automatic admission when I applied in 1998 (meet the SAT/GPA requirements, you're in). Now even they have an acceptance rate that is somewhere on the 50s.

But how many students really applied in those days. If application rates were low, which I think is very likely, then selection rates can simply be higher.

I remember reading somewhere that just a generation ago, Ivy League schools where about as selective as flagship state schools are today. So many people want to get a brand name education (domestic and international) that it pushes the acceptance rate toward 0. The median standardized test school for successful applications is near perfect.

The robbery is the interest rate. Why should students, young people in their 20s who need to save for homes and families, why should they pay 6% interest when big banks and rich folks get low interest loans from the same federal govt? It's absolutely ass backwards and shows the govt cares for the rich, not students.

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