You don’t have to be Robert Oppenheimer to understand paying $100,000 for a year of college is absurd. But the New York Times reported the cost of attending Vanderbilt University in Nashville will hit $98,426 this fall for engineering students. Throw in spring break in Fort Lauderdale and it tops $100,000.
That’s only for the 35% of students from wealthy families. The other 65% get some sort of need-based aid or academic scholarships. And Vanderbilt is a private school. Still, the $100,000 figure is staggering, and is indicative of excessive college and university prices in general. The University of California pegs total 2024-25 costs at $42,236 for an in-state student living on campus and $76,436 for non-residents.
The Federal Reserve Board tallied $1.7 trillion of student debt as of the third quarter of 2023. That doubled since 2010 and tripled since 2006. It’s often a big drag for decades after graduation. No wonder, Best Colleges reported, since 2010 college enrollment dropped 1.95 million students, or 10%, to 17 million.
Administrative bloat is a big part of the cost increase. A 2021 study in the Review of Social Economy tallied between 1976 and 2018 student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities increased 78%. Full-time faculty went up a little more, 92%. But full-time administrators rose 164%, more than double the student rate; and “other professionals” soared 452%.
“We’re not creating a system of learning so much as a system of dependency,” Lance Christensen told us. He finished second 2022 in the race for California’s superintendent of public instruction and currently is vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Institute. He also has a son soon headed to Brigham Young University in Utah.
Christensen pointed out a lot of young people are realizing they don’t need to run up huge college debt, but can go into a high-paying trade. According to Washington Post Jobs, the top 10% of electricians can plug into pay of $99,800 a year, plumbers $99,920, carpenters $80,940, brick masons $78,810 and HVAC technicians $78,210.
He brought up the numerous and growing on-line courses, such as for computer programming, free on YouTube or the Khan Academy. Or intense, specialized “bootcamps” that charge fees much lower than college tuition. UCI’s coding bootcamp, one of the best in the country, costs $13,495 for 12 weeks, full-time, and includes help with career placement.
He also pointed out many students are offended by the political correctness imposed in many classrooms. They don’t appreciate paying top dollar for little more than indoctrination.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s approach to higher-ed is mainly aimed at using the massive student debt load of millions of Americans as essentially a vote-buying scheme.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Biden’s cynical, unconstitutional attempt to wipe out student loan debt without congressional authorization. Despite this, the president, mindful of the goodwill he’s buying from impacted voters in an election year, is still looking for ways to do the same thing.
The goals of broadly affordable, accessible education and skills training are admirable ones. But the ongoing trend of fueling higher education costs through subsidized loans can’t stand.
A degree in accounting isn’t needed to see college and university costs don’t pencil out.
