Sanders supporters, what do you make of this?

[John Connor]

I have to disagree with that, since the economic data proving wage stagnation when corporate profits began to rise like a rocket goes way back before China started to blossom or jobs were outsourced.

Yeah, fucking bull shit. My parents told me about how life was good in the 70's. You could find a job within a week and groceries didn't cost an arm & leg, etc. Point is you HAD money in your pocket. Now people struggle to make ends meet and both god damn parents have to work placing their kids in the care of someone else. Mean while all that great change that's suppose to take place at the dinner table has gone right out the fucking window and we have a collapse of society as we know it.

 

[zinfamous]

You know, with the high cost of college I think the solution is to stop paying asshole professors upwards of $200 thousand a year. Then you have to go after the high outrageous cost for books. Get to the root of the problem and not create more.

Col. Sanders failed econ 101. He's a perfect candidate for the low information, young voter who doesn't know anything. Especially economics.

College professors are paid off the grants that they receive for their research, not tuition. Their grants also pay for support administration within their departments (overhead costs like HR, purchasing staff, facilities costs, etc--which is generally squeezed out of their funding by upwards of 60% of total rewards that they bring to the university).

Tuition costs have nothing to do with professors--who are the ones that actually bring operating money into the university.

 

[zinfamous]

Yeah, fucking bull shit. My parents told me about how life was good in the 70's. You could find a job within a week and groceries didn't cost an arm & leg, etc. Point is you HAD money in your pocket. Now people struggle to make ends meet and both god damn parents have to work placing their kids in the care of someone else. Mean while all that great change that's suppose to take place at the dinner table has gone right out the fucking window and we have a collapse of society as we know it.

Yeah, that's smart: tell the guy that actually lived through the seventies and experienced the job market, that just told you what it was like, is wrong.

"Well, my mommy and daddy told me!" ....

 

[John Connor]

College professors are paid off the grants that they receive for their research, not tuition. Their grants also pay for support administration within their departments (overhead costs like HR, purchasing staff, facilities costs, etc--which is generally squeezed out of their funding by upwards of 60% of total rewards that they bring to the university).

Tuition costs have nothing to do with professors--who are the ones that actually bring operating money into the university.

So take from the left hand and not the right. Same shit different pile. Fact is, colleges are making profits up the ass on the backs of students.

 

[John Connor]

Yeah, that's smart: tell the guy that actually lived through the seventies and experienced the job market, that just told you what it was like, is wrong.

"Well, my mommy and daddy told me!" ....

I guess my parents didn't live in the 70's? What I said has truth.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Isn't that pretty much true of all of them? Clinton is certainly the same. On the right, the promise is to spend pretty much the same but take less in taxes. Either way, the plan is to borrow our way to prosperity.


Before China, outsourcing was to Mexico. Remember the huge Maquiladora plants? They began under Johnson way back in the sixties, but really blossomed after the 1994 NAFTA.

You can argue that, and I can't deny it. But there was also a severe decline in union clout in our major manufacturing industries. And of course, the blossoming industries of Maquiladora would have occurred partly in response to union wages.

The writing was on the wall when Iacocca stood up and accused the Japanese of "dumping" (my CIVIC 1200, for instance.) That was the late '70s. The man significantly responsible for the post-war resurrection of Japan had tried to sell his disciplines in the states, didn't get much attention, and they were first applied in Japan.

And I can't see what union clout had to do with Deming. Maybe you have an idea about it.

I think Sanders might draw some comfort from the economist Richard Wolfe. I don't think that Wolfe is wrong, either. I just don't think Sanders has enough answers.

But compared to, say, Fiorina, well . . . I have to gag about someone who outsourced all those jobs, who then came back in her unsuccessful Senate campaign to argue "I know how to create jobs!" I really don't think she knows diddly-squat, relatively speaking. She's definitely worse than Hillary.

I'm not even sure if I care whether HIllary or Sanders have plans and answers. I'd rather have somebody in the Oval Office playing counterpoint to the crazies in the House.

That's no earthshattering thought, either. It's just the way I feel this morning before coffee.

 

[Genx87]

Yeah, fucking bull shit. My parents told me about how life was good in the 70's. You could find a job within a week and groceries didn't cost an arm & leg, etc. Point is you HAD money in your pocket. Now people struggle to make ends meet and both god damn parents have to work placing their kids in the care of someone else. Mean while all that great change that's suppose to take place at the dinner table has gone right out the fucking window and we have a collapse of society as we know it.

The 70s with high inflation, mortgages that were double digits, gas lines, and we had high unemployment in the middle? I think your parents are looking too fondly back on a crapastic economic decade.

 

[zinfamous]

I guess my parents didn't live in the 70's? What I said has truth.

what you have is a secondary source. This is never more credible than a primary source.

never

But you are also playing the anecdote game. Why do you think your anecdote is true and his is not?

 

[Bowfinger]

The 70s with high inflation, mortgages that were double digits, gas lines, and we had high unemployment in the middle? I think your parents are looking too fondly back on a crapastic economic decade.

As another who lived through the 70s, I agree. The most notable highlight of the 70s was great music and lots of sex. The economy varied between mediocre and bad. Not 2009 bad, certainly, but worse than the 60s and tech boom era.

 

[Jhhnn]

The problem is that the advent of Federally guaranteed student loans drove up the cost of an education by pumping too much money into the education market.

If we want to reduce the cost of education and reduce the amount of debt then a sure-fire way to do both is to END STUDENT LOANS.

Get rid of student loans and the universities and colleges will have to immediately reduce prices as most students won't be able to afford $40k a year for an education. The for-profit private schools will close shop almost immediately.

And when people graduate from school they'll do so debt-free for the most part.

Just like you did.

So dump all the current 18-22 year olds currently on student loans into the job market & make college only for the well to do.

As if we aren't already suffering from excessive stratification & inequality.

If you do away with student loans you'll also torpedo all kinds of tech schools.

But wait! Ideology always conquers reality, right?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The 70s with high inflation, mortgages that were double digits, gas lines, and we had high unemployment in the middle? I think your parents are looking too fondly back on a crapastic economic decade.

Paul Volcker. 13%+ interest rates on mortgages -- you said that. There was an Arab oil embargo around '73, and then there was '79 -- which we all remember.

What almost makes me ashamed to say it . . . I was just out of school, with pie-in-the-sky ideas and aspirations, not too tuned in to the facts of that decade. I had deferred too much gratification, and trying to catch up. And I kept wondering "What is wrong with me?"

And . . . it wasn't me.

 

[buckshot24]

So dump all the current 18-22 year olds currently on student loans into the job market & make college only for the well to do.

As if we aren't already suffering from excessive stratification & inequality.

If you do away with student loans you'll also torpedo all kinds of tech schools.

But wait! Ideology always conquers reality, right?

Isn't stuffing a market with basically free money going to drive up prices? Where is the incentive for universities to lower tuition cost?

 

[werepossum]

You can argue that, and I can't deny it. But there was also a severe decline in union clout in our major manufacturing industries. And of course, the blossoming industries of Maquiladora would have occurred partly in response to union wages.

The writing was on the wall when Iacocca stood up and accused the Japanese of "dumping" (my CIVIC 1200, for instance.) That was the late '70s. The man significantly responsible for the post-war resurrection of Japan had tried to sell his disciplines in the states, didn't get much attention, and they were first applied in Japan.

And I can't see what union clout had to do with Deming. Maybe you have an idea about it.

I think Sanders might draw some comfort from the economist Richard Wolfe. I don't think that Wolfe is wrong, either. I just don't think Sanders has enough answers.

But compared to, say, Fiorina, well . . . I have to gag about someone who outsourced all those jobs, who then came back in her unsuccessful Senate campaign to argue "I know how to create jobs!" I really don't think she knows diddly-squat, relatively speaking. She's definitely worse than Hillary.

I'm not even sure if I care whether HIllary or Sanders have plans and answers. I'd rather have somebody in the Oval Office playing counterpoint to the crazies in the House.

That's no earthshattering thought, either. It's just the way I feel this morning before coffee.

I'm not sure if union clout is directly related to Deming's points of management, but it's certainly related indirectly. Unions thought they owned the jobs, so they began demanding more than the market would bear. But management played its part as well - by erecting rather than tearing down barriers between labor and management and engineering and management, workers saw management doing things that wasted money and yielded inferior products. If a worker sees his employer wasting money, the natural instinct is to assume that his employer could (and therefore should) be paying him more. We saw a perfect storm, where workers assumed the market could bear whatever they demanded, engineering designed inferior products, rising competitors offered better quality and/or lower costs, and management shifted its priority to its own pay, to the point of ignoring all these other things.

As another who lived through the 70s, I agree. The most notable highlight of the 70s was great music and lots of sex. The economy varied between mediocre and bad. Not 2009 bad, certainly, but worse than the 60s and tech boom era.

The recession during Carter's and much of Reagan's first terms was probably as bad as 2007-2008, although not as dangerous. Probably most of us here remember the misery index. It was the first and most severe collision between our increasing energy appetite and our decreasing (as a function of our consumption) energy production. It was probably also the first time in American history where most Americans thought our best days were behind us.

When we have those thoughts today, it's useful to think back to those days and reflect on how much more wealthy a nation we've become. We have legitimately lost some things - economic opportunity for people whose only asset is willingness to work hard comes to mind, and an embarrassingly high national debt - but overall we've had a pretty good half century.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Isn't stuffing a market with basically free money going to drive up prices? Where is the incentive for universities to lower tuition cost?

It is if money is the only currency of relevance.

I'd said before that standards for entrance to state U's -- especially here in CA -- weren't going to make it feasible for people to get NDEA loans if they just couldn't get in the door.

But you could say the same thing about fixed-rate mortgage loans. Even if it had been possible to default on an NDEA debt and still eventually retrieve a decent credit-rating, it wasn't "free money." You had to pay it back.

 

[Jhhnn]

Isn't stuffing a market with basically free money going to drive up prices? Where is the incentive for universities to lower tuition cost?

What free money? Tell it to people paying 6-10% on student loans.

 

[buckshot24]

What free money? Tell it to people paying 6-10% on student loans.

How does that affect the universities? It isn't free to the students, you're correct.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

What free money? Tell it to people paying 6-10% on student loans.

As I said also. You weren't likely to buy a new car without a loan. You couldn't get a house without a loan. The only way you could get those things without a loan depended on the circumstances of being "flush."

The GI Bill meant free money for college. Would you say "don't do that because of too much money making it possible for universities to raise tuitions?"

First, education isn't an ice-cream cone, TV set, or any of those things. There is an equity problem -- fairness. Would you have it that some Einstein spent his life sweeping carpets because he "couldn't go to college?"

Anyway, Jhhnn, those are points I throw out there for buckshot.

I don't think the problem arises from student borrowing. I think there are other causes.

 

[buckshot24]

The GI Bill meant free money for college. Would you say "don't do that because of too much money making it possible for universities to raise tuitions?"

Having no incentive to cut cost isn't the same thing as wanting to raise prices. I'm just talking about the economics here, not what we should stop doing.

Anyway, Jhhnn, those are points I throw out there for buckshot.

I don't think the problem arises from student borrowing. I think there are other causes.

Do you think government guaranteed student loans have had any effect on the price of tuition? If not, why not? How could it not? I don't think this is the only reason they have gone up either.

 

[ivwshane]

I guess my parents didn't live in the 70's? What I said has truth.

Clearly they were high on drugs because you seem to have inherited their addictive traits and I'm guessing you also suffered brain damage as a result of their behavior.

So yeah your second hand recalling of history is probably more accurate than a first hand account. /s

Don't you have a conspiracy to add to?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Having no incentive to cut cost isn't the same thing as wanting to raise prices. I'm just talking about the economics here, not what we should stop doing.
Do you think government guaranteed student loans have had any effect on the price of tuition? If not, why not? How could it not? I don't think this is the only reason they have gone up either.

The boomer generation was the largest surge of college-age people to go through the mills.

What I see is that the salaries of administrative positions have gone through the roof. We're talking about some of these top administrators at state schools commanding $500K/annum.

Your run-of-the-mill faculty, not so much.

Meanwhile, state funding for public universities has been curtailed.

I'm still puzzled.

Even during the mid'80s, I was using my credit card to pay tuition at a Virginia state school. And the charges weren't enormous. I was paying out of pocket, working full time, and I think one semester I used the MC or Visa for an $800 charge.

 

[Jhhnn]

How does that affect the universities? It isn't free to the students, you're correct.

It lets them expand campuses, hire more faculty & staff to handle the load.

We could add a lot of them to the umemployed along with much of the student body.

If we could apply more right wing thinking to the economy in general we could probably cause it to implode on itself.

That would be great for the true Bush constituency, I'm sure. The best time to be rich is when everybody else is broke, busted & begging. That's when you can really put the bone to 'em, particularly when they're as well propagandized as they are today.

 

[ivwshane]

If we look at the cost of college and all the statistics used to explain the rise in costs to students I wonder what metric would stand out. I'm guessing that like health care, education costs have increased in a large part due to an increase in administrative costs. If you look at health care you can see a huge (what looks to me as a waste) is a big increase in administrative costs at every level at hospitals and insurance companies. I'm guessing the education system has seen a similar increase.

Anyone want to look up the numbers?
Number of students over the last several decades?
Tuition costs over that same period?
Total costs over the same period?
Per capita spending at the state level? At the federal level? Over the same time period?
Number of full time professors? Part time? Over the same time period?
Average salary of teachers over the same time period?
Administrative costs over the same time period?
And any other metrics that might be pertinent?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If we look at the cost of college and all the statistics used to explain the rise in costs to students I wonder what metric would stand out. I'm guessing that like health care, education costs have increased in a large part due to an increase in administrative costs. If you look at health care you can see a huge (what looks to me as a waste) is a big increase in administrative costs at every level at hospitals and insurance companies. I'm guessing the education system has seen a similar increase.

Anyone want to look up the numbers?
Number of students over the last several decades?
Tuition costs over that same period?
Total costs over the same period?
Per capita spending at the state level? At the federal level? Over the same time period?
Number of full time professors? Part time? Over the same time period?
Average salary of teachers over the same time period?
Administrative costs over the same time period?
And any other metrics that might be pertinent?

Not today, thank you, but that's the way to go about it.

I'd been told at one time, maybe during the '80s, that Economics departments disciplined the number of PhDs they'd graduate based on what market prospects for such graduates would be.

UC has a particular history. Robert McNamara attended in the 1920s. In "Fog of War" he mentioned semester tuition of $25. When I started attending in 1966, it was maybe $100, but they called it "student fees." Governor Reagan was determined to charge tuition, so it went up (Oh! Golly! Horrors!) to between $100 and $200.

There was a massive infusion of money into CA for Cold War defense spending. Brown (Sr.) oversaw the building of highways and expansion of the UC system. Taxpayer money paid for a lot.

Then you had Proposition 13 -- probably late '70s?

Even in the '90s, it wasn't nearly as bad as today. My brother went back to school at same campus I'd attended, got through three years and quit. He was getting both loans and grants (free money). His loan balance at that point was still only 3/4 of the total in nominal dollars that I'd racked up decades earlier, but by his story, it caused him great consternation. He practically had a BBA. Bad decision: deciding to continue with his "culinary career."

Janet Napolitano was Atty General in AZ, then governor. Then head of DHS, and after that, President of UC. Over the last two years or so, this issue of UC and state university (state college system) tuition was big in the papers. And I don't think she impressed me with her pronouncements about it.

Something is just very wrong with this. You could argue that it's "right," or that I got a great college education for chump change on the backs of taxpayers. But if people weren't having problems, if for instance there weren't an issue about "out of state" admissions that also meant more tuition income versus in-state students, it would not be so much in the news.

And it's been in the local news and the Times for good part of a decade.

And back to state government and the budget. I think today they were noting that CA -- with once one of the best road systems in the US -- has serious road problems. An estimate put the cost at fixing it all at $135B. They obviously aren't getting the gas-tax revenue they once had, and that's cited as a reason. So there's a special legislative session to deal with it, and a suggestion that they were going to use a bandaid here, a bandaid there.

Great idea! Starve the federal and state levels in a bathtub!

If suddenly property taxes doubled overnight, we'd adjust to it. We're only paying $950/year on a $350,000 property. Because of Proposition 13, ya see.

 

[buckshot24]

It lets them expand campuses, hire more faculty & staff to handle the load.

So at least you're acknowledging that the money flooding into the system is having an effect on the colleges and universities. If you're running a business and people keep buying from you are you going to cut prices? No, there is no incentive to do so if they can fill their classrooms at a certain tuition.

I'm not interested in the partisan portion of your post so I'll skip that.

 

[buckshot24]

The boomer generation was the largest surge of college-age people to go through the mills.

What I see is that the salaries of administrative positions have gone through the roof. We're talking about some of these top administrators at state schools commanding $500K/annum.

Your run-of-the-mill faculty, not so much.

Meanwhile, state funding for public universities has been curtailed.

I'm still puzzled.

Even during the mid'80s, I was using my credit card to pay tuition at a Virginia state school. And the charges weren't enormous. I was paying out of pocket, working full time, and I think one semester I used the MC or Visa for an $800 charge.

It looks like you're describing a symptom of the "free money" being rammed into the system. These high salaries wouldn't be getting paid if they couldn't charge these absurd tuition rates. Why can they charge these rates? Well, "free money" the government guarantees they will be getting.