Is Getting a College Degree worth it? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.

Is it worth going into debt to get a four year degree?

Yes, it is worth it.
8
24%
No, it is not.
6
18%
Maybe depending on the major or field.
17
50%
Other.
3
9%
#15175496
I say generally yes but with a qualification. The qualification is, "it depends on what it is that do in place of college".

Several points.

I agree with Dr X about the fluff. But that fluff is sometimes life changing even though it is not something that one uses in his/her job every day.

College graduates generally speak differently from non graduates. They have a better vocabulary and that allows them to extract more from what they read or hear.

I firmly believe in cultural literacy. If, for example, one had never read the Bible or more commonly had never studied broad subject matter in college, what would they make of this very common statement:

"It was the Genesis of an idea." If they did not know what Genesis is they would be far behind everyone in the room.

This broader cultural knowledge helps one see the world in a different light.

A college degree is good for self esteem.

One never knows where the twists and turns will take one.

My wife has a teaching degree (among others) and though she has never taught knows she could if she needed to.

Now I freely admit that college in the US is FAR to expensive. That is due in large part to the whole concept of a student loan. They should be abolished. There is no incentive for colleges and universities to reduce costs to students as long as the government will guarantee every loan and allow students to pay the freight.

Those of us with degrees probably cannot even imagine what life would be like without the knowledge we acquired getting them. We are probably the last people to ask. What do those without degrees think?
#15175497
@Tainari88

It would seem you might have a very good point. However, you are throwing out numbers and what appear to be facts without backing them up with any authortative sources. Where are you getting these numbers and what appear to be facts in your reply to my post? What sources do you have to prove your information is truly legitimate and accurate?

I think you are right that the state funding schools more is appropriate and I support that as long as the underlying economy has the wealth to support that to some degree or another. I also agree with you that a well educated populace is very important to ensure the survival of a democracy and a well functioning society. Even with the states funding education to some degree or another that still doesn't change the fact that universities are a business and have a business side to them they have to respect if they want to keep quality faculty teaching at their institutions and their doors open to students. No matter what industry or profession you are in or where you go, it is fundamental law of economics and life that nothing is free. There is no such thing as a free lunch whether the university is funded by the state or through private funding. I do support funding universities through the state to the degree such that the underlying wealth of the economy funding it can afford it.

Moreover, it is extremely important that the less privileged members of society have access both to a high quality education and college education to ensure a well informed and educated society. The poor and less privileged members of society having access to both a high quality education and college education helps tremendously towards ensuring the survival of democracy and a well functioning society that is less dysfunctional. But again, how much the state can afford to fund these universities to make education more accessible to the less privileged depends on what the underlying economy can afford to pay towards this goal and ideal (politics also plays a role in state funding too obviously). The more the underlying economy can afford to pay towards funding these universities so long as they make education more accessible to the poor and under-privileged, the better (the political capital in the underlying political system has to be there too and not just only the wealth of the underlying economy).

That aside, the reality today is that most students have to pay for their own educations. Given this fact or reality it is thus important to be pragmatic and for students to choose fields of study that will pay for themselves (hence enable the student to pay off their student loans completely themselves) and provide higher earnings to the student than they otherwise would have been able to make had they not gone to college to make going to college in today's environment feasible and reasonable to the student who has to take on the financial risk of student loan debt. The student needs to fully understand these risks too so they can make an appropriate plan to mitigate those risks. The student must also find this field enjoyable as making a ton of money but hating your job is not advisable for anybody. So, the student who goes to school today when they are on the hook to pay the full cost through student loan debt and working a side job should choose a field that fits the criteria below for themselves:


  • The cost of studying a specific field will pay for itself, meaning somebody who is employed in this field will make enough to able to pay off student loans within a reasonable amount of time such that it won't take too long to pay off the student loan and the loan borrower will still be young enough to purchase a home or start a business after the student loan is totally paid off.
  • The study of a specific field will also provide significantly higher earnings than what a student otherwise would have earned had they not gone to college and studied that specific field once they are employed in that field.
  • The student finds the specific field being studied enjoyable, fulfilling and meaningful and thus brings happiness to the student when they graduate from college and go to work in that specific field.

The above three criteria should be true for the student before becoming willing to take on the financial risk they will face by attending college in today's financial aid and college landscape. They also want to ensure that the risk is highly in their favor that their field of study will still be in high demand when they graduate college so they can easily find a high paying job once they graduate to quickly pay off student loans and start earning a higher salary than what they otherwise would have earned had they not studied that specific field.
Last edited by Politics_Observer on 03 Jun 2021 20:34, edited 1 time in total.
#15175503
Politics I think you have been sold a bill of goods that is untrue. Educations should be used to form human beings that know how to think. Not how to turn a profit and keep backing that system no matter what. But the superstructure of society backs the most conventional paradigms. Not the ones who might be the answer to what is not working.

Where is my data? This:



Politics, people have the false belief that socialism or state funding for publicly backed institutions dealing with health care or education (where socialism is actually much superior a model than the capitalist model for those two areas of society Politics Observer) are somehow 'giveaways'. Nothing is a giveaway. They come from taxes. From working people paying percentages for the government to adminster for the entire population.

The problem is that the big banks want socialism for them. For the state to bail them out and save them from going under due to bad decisions and risky speculations. And for the general working people to be dealt with like if they are obligated to bail out the richest in society.

No. Too much money is wasted in having the banks and Wall street not held responsible for contributing to the public coffers. Most businesses in the USA are small. Less than 50 employees. They are not favored or even considered most of the time. In most of the states. It is only huge corporations like Amazon and others who are let off easy in terms of taxation and many other things. If you analyze if those industries were taxed as the average worker was? You have enough money to easily provide free of cost educations to millions of college students in all fifty states.

They don't do that because the banks will lose some money that they don't want to lose. They pay off the politicians and don't have the bills who propose fairness pass the house or the senate. It all dies.



Politics, many universities are free in Latin American nations.UNAM, UPR, and many many others. Why? State funding. College degrees should be free for families that can't afford it and also public universities are expensive things to run and if you let profit get the best of those institutions less and less people can afford tuitions. Banks grow rich off of exclusive rights and or larger amounts of youth being indebted to them over time. It is quite logical why a bank might want to force student loans to be used. They (the banks) passed laws stating in many states that you can't charge off student loans. You can charge off credit card debts and consumer goods, etc. But not student loans. Why are they the exception? This:



Why are they defaulting? The job they get after graduating doesn't pay enough to make hefty payments every month. They have problems.

These conservative American Enterprise institutes types? Never go back in history to the time when college was free in many states Politics. It worked before and why can't it work now? Mexico can afford having their largest public university system go the free route. Why can't the USA? The answer is? Greed from banks living off of interest payments.
#15175511
Politics_Observer wrote:@Tainari88

It would seem you might have a very good point. However, you are throwing out numbers and what appear to be facts without backing them up with any authortative sources. Where are you getting these numbers and what appear to be facts in your reply to my post? What sources do you have to prove your information is truly legitimate and accurate?



As of 2019 the University of PR tuition is:

The cost of tuition and fees at UPR Rio Piedras is lowered significantly for students living in Puerto Rico. Tuition and fees for in-state students is set at $4,168 for the 2019 - 2020 year, a 32.2% discount off the price charged to out-of-state students. Tuition is $3,968 and fees $200.

UPR Rio Piedras tuition and fees for out-of-state undergrads is $6,152 for the 2019 - 2020 school year. Of this total, $5,952 was the cost of tuition and $200 the cost of fees.
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges ... /#secPrice

No tuition in state universities is easy to do if only the gifted are admitted and if those with money are asked to pay tuition. Admitting every Joe Blow to college is not a plan and they end up dropping out or studying a garbage major where everybody passes. In Germany and Japan these people are guided to vocational schools.

Many American universities are too much like country clubs and they teach garbage majors to admit mediocre students and cash-in on the government provided tuition via student loans.
Last edited by Julian658 on 03 Jun 2021 18:59, edited 1 time in total.
#15175518
Heisenberg wrote:I'm not at all convinced that the higher-education-as-a-business model has materially improved the standard of teaching, to be honest. There seems to be a pretty good case that it has led to grade inflation on a large scale (I know in the UK, universities actually market themselves to international students based on how many first class and 2:1 degrees they give out!), because students are now "customers" and feel entitled to a "return on investment" in the form of higher grades.

That's the nub of it. Vice Chancellor's are fawning over students left, right and centre because they need the income stream.

Wat0n wrote:I think @Politics_Observer is focusing on research and not teaching here. Often, teaching is seen as a pain in the ass by academics.


I don't know how it compares with the US, but in the UK there is a clear schism between lecturers and researchers. Most researchers can't teach for toffee (and don't want to) and most lecturers can't do research for toffee (and don't want to either).

In recent years there has been a top down push to require academic staff to be able to do both, but at the academic coal-face the schism remains.

For example, I've been interviewed for several jobs at the university through whom I've done my PhD and in all their job adverts they trumpet the notion that all their academic staff will spend 40% of their time teaching, 40% on research and the other twenty on admin and so forth. But the reality, when you know the place and the people, is that the actual academic staff merely pay lip service to this idea. The last time I was interviewed three times for a senior lecturer post, teaching mental health nursing, one of my doctoral supervisors was on the panel and afterwards he told me off the record that I shouldn't have even mentioned research except in the context of my PhD, because what they wanted was a nurse teacher, not a researcher.
#15175521
Tainari88 wrote:For me Politics, this is what is wrong with how the USA runs things. For me a university should never be run like a business. In the past it was run by the state. The state would set aside ample funds for their universities.


This is another gray area for me. I have no problem with charging $$ for a good "higher education". While I agree that basic education is beneficial for society as whole and should be provided freely (primary/secondary/highschool) because as a whole we benefit from a society that has universal reading, basic math capabilities and basic understanding of science.... On the other hand, I don't think higher education such as university/post-graduate degrees are necessary. Don't get me wrong, I would prefer it if more people had the education.
I think that at the higher levels, if you can offer valuable teachings you should be well compensated for it. It seems to me the major problem arrises from the distractions... endowment for the sake of endowment, sports money, research for the sake of research and padding their own resume, administrators and non-academic "bosses" getting paid exorbitant amounts of money "because they make money for the school" meanwhile the cherished physics professor that have thought for 20 years is getting by with a comparatively mediocre salary.
I don't have a solution for these problems, at least not one that is not based on "fairness, honor and responsibility". One that is naive to believe will work.
#15175532
@Tainari88

Tainari wrote:Politics I think you have been sold a bill of goods that is untrue.


Specifically, which of my assertions do you believe is false from my last previous post? State which assertions I made in my last previous post you believe to be false and make your case by presenting your evidence from authoritative sources to debunk and refute the specific assertions you say are false.

@Julian658

Thank you for bringing some level of facts to the discussion. However, I am not sure if the facts you presented pertain to what Tainari has presented as facts to this discussion given she has brought up the cost of tuition for some universities in the 1970s versus the cost of tuition today. Your facts seem to address the cost of tuition of today in Puerto Rico only but not compare those costs of today versus the 1970s while taking inflation into account.

The facts you presented only seem to address Puerto Rico and not a realistic cost that the average American student given any state or territory the student could expect to pay in those times versus today. Plus, given your source comes from a ".com" website, I would try to dual source that with another source that has the same figures to further solidify the premise of any claim or assertion you wish to make based upon the collegefactual.com source.
#15175548
@Politics_Observer read this article from the Atlantic:

Specifically, which of my assertions do you believe is false from my last previous post? State which assertions I made in my last previous post you believe to be false and make your case by presenting your evidence from authoritative sources to debunk and refute the specific assertions you say are false.


https://www.theatlantic.com/education/a ... ca/569884/

Check the part of the article that talks about what happened to the budgets of big public universities:

All told, including the contributions of individual families and the government (in the form of student loans, grants, and other assistance), Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year—nearly twice as much as the average developed country. “The U.S. is in a class of its own,” says Andreas Schleicher, the director for education and skills at the OECD, and he does not mean this as a compliment. “Spending per student is exorbitant, and it has virtually no relationship to the value that students could possibly get in exchange.”

You have written in this forum that you found a huge difference in educational quality between a private education and a publicly funded one. Why? Money.

Another excerpt from the above-quoted article:

One oddity of America’s higher-education system is that it is actually three different systems masquerading as one: There is one system of public colleges; another of private, nonprofit institutions; and one made up of for-profit colleges.

The biggest system by far is the public one, which includes two-year community colleges and four-year institutions. Three out of every four American college students attend a school in this public system, which is funded through state and local subsidies, along with students’ tuition dollars and some federal aid.

In this public system, the high cost of college has as much to do with politics as economics. Many state legislatures have been spending less and less per student on higher education for the past three decades. [highlight=yellow]Bewitched by the ideology of small government (and forced by law to balance their budgets during a period of mounting health-care costs), states have been leaving once-world-class public universities begging for money.
The cuts were particularly stark after the 2008 recession, and they set off a cascading series of consequences, some of which were never intended.

[/highlight]

Why make them beg for money? They become businesses and the banks and the for profit model grows. Even though educational institutions should not be in that model. It is the same in importance as public schools. You need educated people Politics in large quantities that can go out there and create a society full of people who can make changes to the world that are of positive effect. People who are not educated are prisoners in many many levels. So many ways you become a prisoner with poverty and not having an education. It is an enormous waste of human potential. Yet it is accepted because of the idea that getting an education is a business that needs to be treated like something of a luxury. It is not. Health and surviving a pandemic, or free public health and free public educations is the core of civilization. If you make it for rich people only? You leave out huge percentages of humanity. A real waste of human talent.

This article is interesting from sofi.
https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/stud ... JZdsfBrfAQ


The video Politics at the beginning of this thread discusses the issues with student loans and debt. why it is hard.

Again, universities did not have to beg for money they had ample funds. The philosophy of small government and making the colleges and universities beg for funds? REPUBLICAN conservative stuff and neoliberalism. Those are the banks and people who believe capitalism business model has to be the way to go for all institutions. It is highly detrimental because it winds up damaging the ability of very poor or low income students from affording college. Also, many low income students never get good foundational K-12 public or private educations Politics. They don't get what they need to succeed in a very demanding academic environment. Mostly because public schools in bad neighborhoods fail at educating those students.

It then becomes only the right class of parents can benefit from attending and sticking it out.

Equity is something all of us got to work on. All the time. Especially with Health and with Education.
#15175586
I think the simple solution now is really the best. College prices in the US are way too high because we are not at all incentivising the colleges to provide affordable education. Not at all. They see themselves as fundraising organizations. They get money for research. They get money for sports. They get money from tuition. And at the end of the day, the federal government will loan young people, who may not be the most astute money managers and for whom the future is endless, any amount of money the school wants them to pay.

Is it reasonable to send a school teacher into the world $100.000 in debt? Not in my opinion.

I have an unpopular view of college students. I work with them everyday. Cartertonian can correct me if I am wrong. That is: Consider nursing students. When we talk about paying for their education we speak of socialism or wealth redistribution. So in the US we make them go in debt up to their ears to do a job that we desperately need to have done. When we train a medic in the army, who will work for that nurse, we pay him/her while they are training and consider them a patriot for taking the job. Now I am a retired soldier and do not take lightly the commitment to go to war so maybe there are better examples. But it seems to me that the student, far from being a socialist or leech on the system is doing us (society) a favor by giving us four years of their time to be trained as a nurse.

Even more unpopular. I think this is pretty much true in any job. We, wrongly in my opinion, think that students are not sacrificing a great deal to be educated. Yes it improve their earning power. Got that. But we really need educated people. WRT to that in which one majors.....If we publicly funded tuition to Yale drama school there would be a hue and cry about socialism and worthless degrees. At least until we consider the amount of joy Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub and Meryl Streep have given us.

So I guess that I think that it is unfair to consider tuition free education as "free". It is not. It requires of the student a great deal of work, dedication and commitment. That is a big investment on their part.
#15175600
@Tainari88

I am not arguing the fact that state legislatures have been under-funding public education. I agree with you. I believe we can afford to fund public universities much more than what we are right now in order to make a college education more accessible for the less privileged. What I am arguing is that college is indeed a business and has to be out of necessity.

Nothing is free whether the state pays for it or private individuals. I was also stating that given the reality of today that individuals will have to take on more of the cost of education, they have to do some serious risk mitigation due to the fact they could very well be going into student loan debt to finance those college educations. Taking on student loan debt or any debt is a risk and you have to do some serious risk mitigation to put the odds heavily in your own favor to graduate and once you graduate.

Also, you have to consider if the state starts taking on the lions share of paying for college educations, taxes will probably have to go up to bring in the money necessary to pay for those educations. Which further highlights my point, nothing is free. Plus, if the state is paying the lions share of education, the universities will have to justify their budgets to state governments if they start asking for more money. Like any business, when you go to the boss man for a raise or to ask for more money to pay for something in the company, you got to justify the cost.
#15175606
@Politics_Observer What I am arguing is that college is indeed a business and has to be out of necessity.


I am not being trite when I ask.....Why does college have to be a business and high school not. There is no fundamental difference in purpose. Besides. I remember when California had free tuition to residents. They did when I started in college.
Politifact said:
"Public colleges and universities were often free at their founding in the United States, but over time, as public support was reduced or not increased sufficiently to compensate for their growth in students and costs (faculty and staff salaries, utilities etc.), they moved first to a low tuition and eventually higher tuition policy," said Cornell University professor Ronald Gordon Ehrenberg.

For example, California offered free tuition to in-state students until the 1970s, although it charged an "incidental fee" starting in 1921.


So your argument is that tuition is a necessity. Tell me why.
#15175688
Drlee wrote:I am not being trite when I ask.....Why does college have to be a business and high school not. There is no fundamental difference in purpose. Besides. I remember when California had free tuition to residents. They did when I started in college.


So your argument is that tuition is a necessity. Tell me why.


My parents got free Master's degrees from that California University free tuition system from the 1970s. The issues with the university systems getting out of control had to do with conservative stuff, neoliberalism and private banks. Otherwise never could have afforded it Drlee. My mother worked full time and my father part time and helped raise and educate my sister and I.

My mother later got a scholarship to study at the University of San Francisco but it was because she was an outstanding student. It is a private, Catholic university. And it has unique programs. Doctoral programs.

My father got two masters Drlee. One in bilingual education and the other in linguistics. My mother in bilingual education and later on in her older years in Puerto Rico (her Alma Mater) in social psychology. Her undergrad was in General Studies. A little bit of everything. Math, science, literature, social sciences, etc. She was the valedictorian.

It costs them ZERO. NO student debt. My father bought a four-bedroom two bath condo in Chula Vista, California with a Veteran's Administration home loan. If they would have had mountains of student debt from Puerto Rico? Never would have qualified.

The expensive universities and even the high cost of college degrees in many systems that are state-funded? Remain out of reach for low-income students who know if they take on 100k in loans they will never qualify for a house. Ever. They wind up forgoing college forever.
#15175732
@Drlee @Tainari88

Like it or not, universities and yes, high schools are businesses. Property taxes pay most of the cost of high schools. But whether it's property taxes, state and/or federal government or private individuals or a combination of all these, high schools and universities are businesses and they got to keep a budget and spend the money wisely to keep the doors open. There is a business side to education.

When it comes to high schools, if you live in a wealthy neighborhood with much higher property values, those high schools are going to get more funding and more money and thus be better schools than other high schools that are located in poorer neighborhoods with lower property values who do not get as much funding. Guess where the better teachers are going to be teaching? You got it, the wealthier neighborhood with higher property values that pay more money in property taxes and thus whose schools get better funding.

Yes, Tainairi I am attending a private school I could never afford to attend without Uncle Sam paying my tab for me. I make sure I perform very well while attending that school given I can't afford to squander such an opportunity. It's a private non-profit regionally accredited school but it's expensive to attend. It's an excellent school and they work your ass off. I think they do a very good job of preparing you for chosen field of study and getting your IT skills sharp. They have an excellent cyber security and IT program but they are especially known for their cyber security program. They have the NSA's stamp of approval for academic excellence and receive federal funding.
Last edited by Politics_Observer on 05 Jun 2021 03:14, edited 1 time in total.
#15175733
@Drlee @Tainari88

Here is an article from "The Guardian" which in my opinion paints an accurate picture.

Jana Kasperkevic of The Guardian wrote:On 8 May 2013, Cooper Union students calmly walked into the president’s office and took up their residence. They did not leave for the next 65 days.

The months-long sit-in, which is sometimes referred to as Occupy Cooper Union, was staged to protest the school’s decision to impose tuition – something the school had never done since its founding in 1895. This fall, for the first time since the arts and engineering school was established, its students will have to cover a portion of their tuition on their own.

Here’s the harsh truth: colleges are a business.

Andrew Rossi, best known for the journalism documentary Page One, has written, directed and produced a new documentary on the increasing prominence of capitalist management principles at US colleges and universities.

Cooper Union’s decision to charge tuition and its consequences are at the heart of Ivory Tower, a documentary out on DVD on 30 September.

Ivory Tower takes a look at universities and their transformation from providers of education to business ventures that strive to be the biggest and the best providers of the “college experience”.

The competition among these institutions of higher learning has had an adverse effect on those they are suppose to serve. From less rigorous curriculums to higher tuition prices, the universities have changed the way Americans think of educations. Students are now consumers and university presidents are CEOs overseeing multiplexes of the college experience. In order to pay for that experience, students are taking out an average of about $30,000 in student loans. The overall student debt in the US has now surpassed $1tn.

Even Cooper Union, which was based on the belief that college education should be open and free to all and was able to provide free education for over 150 years, was not able to escape unscathed.

The school’s problems all started in 2006 with a $175m loan taken out by the board to construct a new building at 41 Cooper Square, just across the street from the school’s existing facilities. The project cost about $1,000 per square foot.

As the school struggles to pay back the loan, it has come with a new way to make that money: tuition. The school will still cover half of its $40,000 sticker price, leaving students to figure out how to cover the rest. The first time the issue of charging tuition came up in 2012, the students referred to it as betrayal. Even those graduating, who would not be affected by the decision, took a firm stance against the proposal which they felt undermined everything the school stood for.

The building is not the root of all of the school’s troubles, however. Cooper Union also made some unwise investments.

The school used part of its loan to invest in hedge funds, which suffered during the financial crisis.

When asked by Rossi if such investments were wise, Cooper Union’s president Jamshed Bharucha did not exactly have an answer.



https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-mo ... -loan-debt
#15175794
@Politics_Observer
Like it or not, universities and yes, high schools are businesses. Property taxes pay most of the cost of high schools. But whether it's property taxes, state and/or federal government or private individuals or a combination of all these, high schools and universities are businesses and they got to keep a budget and spend the money wisely to keep the doors open. There is a business side to education.


You did not construct an argument for WHY colleges must be run as businesses. (As not like.) This quote simply maintains that the school should adopt good fiscal management and that is not what we are talking about.

We are talking about running schools like profit making organizations. So consider:

High schools must practice good fiscal discipline but they do not serve to turn a profit for anyone. Universities have come to do that in a big way. As was pointed out, they are a major boon for the banking industry through trillion dollar loan placement. They perform as entertainment venues through sports. They serve industry by providing essentially free research. The are a boon to real estate investors as they move away from competing with them by providing dorm rooms. In other words, unlike high schools which get all of their money from taxes, universities fund this stuff, at least in large part, by charging students for what may be an entry into a lowish paying job.

Setting aside private colleges for a moment...College tuition has increased nearly 30% in public schools in the past decade. Why PO? Tell me how your business model justifies this? My guess is that you can't. We are not talking an improved product. I have posted this before. This is a real number.

In a three semester hour, 300 level course with which I am associated, students pay, after grants and aid, an average of $630.00 per semester hour to attend based upon a semester of 15 yours. YMMV. The class I am working with enrolls 80 students each getting 3 hours of credit. Do the math. In what world does one class, requiring one paid faculty, once a week three hours, no supplies to speak of other than photocopying, no textbook, need to generate $151,000.00? That is outrageous especially if you consider what they are paying the adjunct to teach it. And what does the student get? I would like to think a life-changing look at an important societal issue but at the end of the day they get three hours of 300 level credit in the college of sociology. The online MBA program, as another example, costs over $1100.00 per hour. And this is a state school ostensibly funded, at least in part, by tax money.

No PO this is a national scandal. Even in less expensive schools the costs are absurd. Cut the per semester hour cost for this class to 1/3rd and tell me how much better you feel about the ripoff. Now I get that this is an expensive school as state schools go. (54% above the national average for state schools.)

Tell me something PO. If this school is owned by the state, and is generating this much money for each semester hour, why is it not a profit center for the state. Instead of paying the university, why is the university not paying the state its profits? And, oh by the way, let's not even consider the amount of money these same students pour into the local economy in the form of taxes and economic activity.
#15175797
What does it mean for an university NOT to be ran as a business? I'm asking because nonprofits in general are often ran as businesses, the only difference is that they reinvest profits rather than hand them out as dividends.
#15175808
What does it mean for an university NOT to be ran as a business? I'm asking because nonprofits in general are often ran as businesses, the only difference is that they reinvest profits rather than hand them out as dividends.


Nonprofits are not businesses. If colleges were running as nonprofits they would be charged with being as frugal as possible to serve as many or as much as possible. That is NOT the charter of a college. They have become for-profit organizations in all but name only. They engage in research to benefit private industry at WAY under the market value for that research as one example. They are entertainment venues. They reduce on campus housing to aid the local real estate market.

So let me ask you a question. I know why a business has incentive to cut costs. It improves the dividend to stockholders which they are, by law, required to do. Answer these three questions:

What is a college or universities incentive to cut costs?

What is their incentive to lower tuition?

What are the negative consequences for a college or university for maintaining high tuition?

I know what they should be. What are they?
#15175825
@Drlee @Tainari88

I see non-profits as businesses too. They have to run an efficient operation and use good fiscal management. As far as like paying dividends, obviously universities would not directly pay dividends to shareholders in terms of money. However, I would say that non-profits, high schools and universities do have stakeholders but their returns are not based upon direct returns in forms of a dividend payment but instead their returns are based upon less tangible items.

So, I think a more accurate term we should use to describe my views is that high schools, colleges and universities are like a business but not corporations in terms that the dividends they pay is not in the form of money dividends but instead on less tangible items like the quality of education a student may receive from that institution of education and in the case of some non-profits that they fulfilled the purpose they were set to serve. I do think some non-profits are money making machines and are used to dodge taxes, for example, some churches are like this.

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