Soaring higher-ed costs are a problem

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.

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 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.

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 is vice president of education policy and government affairs at the California Policy Institute.

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 online courses, such as for computer programming, free on Youtube or the Khan Academy. Or intense, specialized “boot camps” 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

As higher-ed becomes more expensive for non-valid reasons like administrative bloat, parents and students alike ought to consider alternatives. On the policy front, policymakers shouldn’t bail out student loans but they can promote lower-cost alternatives.