Tuition based on ability to pay for all?

[jimbogumbo]

Author advocates no upper fixed tuition price.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/13/billionaires-college-tuition-economic-inequality-00061533

[dismalist]

The man is fundamentally misguided. The sticker price is the price for the rich. Competition keeps it where it is. The "aid" is not altruistic. It adds revenue, paid by those who would not pay the sticker price. What he wants can only be attained by a cartel. As a lawyer, he should know that that violates the Sherman Act.

The scheme is equivalent to an earmarked tax. Others will want to do the same for a thousand other commodities.

Oh, and if implemented, watch foreign universities and American universities abroad pick up custom.

ETA: Missing word.

[marshwiggle]

Oh, and if implemented, watch foreign universities and American universities abroad pick up custom.

Yup. Rich people aren't stupid. Unless they really believe there's no place in the entire world where they can get a comparable education to that at "From-each-according-to-his-ability" University, they'll just go elsewhere.

(Seriously, many (most?) other countries just don't have a lot of private institutions, so tuition is reasonable for everyone at public ones. This is a bizarre proposal for a solution to a largely American problem, that is the result of Americans generally rejecting the kind of public spending that is taken for granted elsewhere.)

[Mobius]

Oh, and if implemented, watch foreign universities and American universities abroad pick up custom.

Yup. Rich people aren't stupid. Unless they really believe there's no place in the entire world where they can get a comparable education to that at "From-each-according-to-his-ability" University, they'll just go elsewhere.

(Seriously, many (most?) other countries just don't have a lot of private institutions, so tuition is reasonable for everyone at public ones. This is a bizarre proposal for a solution to a largely American problem, that is the result of Americans generally rejecting the kind of public spending that is taken for granted elsewhere.)

To be fair, these countries also tend to have strong two-tier secondary and tertiary education systems.

[dismalist]

Oh, and if implemented, watch foreign universities and American universities abroad pick up custom.

Yup. Rich people aren't stupid. Unless they really believe there's no place in the entire world where they can get a comparable education to that at "From-each-according-to-his-ability" University, they'll just go elsewhere.

(Seriously, many (most?) other countries just don't have a lot of private institutions, so tuition is reasonable for everyone at public ones. This is a bizarre proposal for a solution to a largely American problem, that is the result of Americans generally rejecting the kind of public spending that is taken for granted elsewhere.)

To be fair, these countries also tend to have strong two-tier secondary and tertiary education systems.

I'm glad someone aside from myself brought this up. If you don't ration by price, you have to ration by something else.

If we believe that higher ed has a large return on investment, it can, and should, all be financed with loans at market rates of interest, with bankruptcy allowed, of course. If we don't believe that, we have no business using government finance to pay for non-poor people's consumption. We can't have it both ways.

Higher education may be the only product where at least some consumers try to get as little out of it as possible. :-)

[Anon1787]

What he wants can only be attained by a cartel. As a lawyer, he should know that that violates the Sherman Act.

Well, the legal profession creates barriers to entry that make it much like a cartel and lawyers are paid handsomely to find ways to evade or to lobby to create exceptions to inconvenient laws./snark

Elite universities already have endowments that are large enough to increase their class sizes, but they wouldn't remain elite if they did that much like manufacturers of luxury goods.

I don't see why no-limit tuition would result in more price transparency since price discrimination works best with price obscurity.

And it's a typical rhetorical trick to conflate absolute and relative deprivation. The poor generally don't have to pay any tuition, so this is about providing more subsidies to the middle class.

[marshwiggle]

Elite universities already have endowments that are large enough to increase their class sizes, but they wouldn't remain elite if they did that much like manufacturers of luxury goods.

If somebody gave me buckets of money for my program I'd raise the incoming grade cutoff so I could increase the rigor of the program. "Elite" isn't just about limited numbers; it's about what you can do with limited numbers of very select students.

[Anon1787]

If somebody gave me buckets of money for my program I'd raise the incoming grade cutoff so I could increase the rigor of the program. "Elite" isn't just about limited numbers; it's about what you can do with limited numbers of very select students.

You might do that but Caplan would argue that elite American universities are generally content to make their degrees mostly about signaling and zero-sum status games.

[Hibush]

If somebody gave me buckets of money for my program I'd raise the incoming grade cutoff so I could increase the rigor of the program. "Elite" isn't just about limited numbers; it's about what you can do with limited numbers of very select students.

You might do that but Caplan would argue that elite American universities are generally content to make their degrees mostly about signaling and zero-sum status games.

There is a market for that as well, and a lot of people have trouble distinguishing elite academics from social elitism. They are different, even it there is a certain amount of overlap.