[quote=pri_dk]
Houses are different, but land is not. And the predominant cost in real-estate is the land (location, location, location…)
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One of the chart shows the number of UC students quadrupling since 1960’s. I assume the campuses had to expand and places like UTC are more expensive then they were. The building codes and environmental standards have been updated and what was possible in 1970 is no longer acceptable. Were every building and every room accessible to disabled students 40 years ago?
[quote=pri_dk]
There is no fundamental component of education cost that has outpaced inflation except one – can you guess it!
[/quote]
Honestly, I can’t. Do you have the data? I assume SDSU had to pay some of the cost associated with the work done on I8 and UCSD supercomputer costs some money. Could be mostly salaries, but there are disciplines that did not even exist 40 years ago. People from Princeton used to come to UCSD for training (could still be happening, I don’t know).
Was $30MM annual loss on the athletics program normal 40 years ago? I would rather cut that than what little Shakespeare might be in curriculum.
[quote=pri_dk]
The data shows cost per student, so number of students increasing doesn’t matter. The ‘kids are stupider today’ meme is probably false and doesn’t explain the change in cost structure even if true.
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The kids are not ‘stupider’, but more of them are being pushed into the system and consequently the average college kid is ‘stupider’ today than it was 40 years go.
I have no contact with college students and I don’t know how bright or hardworking they are (one that I do know gave up after nearly 10 years and he is not particularly bright, but he might be an exception). I recognize that many scientific discoveries and scientific papers are performed in US and that tells me the faculty is world class.
[quote=pri_dk]
The ‘recent declines’ is simply pointing out that there is a short-term anomaly (the economic crisis) that doesn’t really impact the long-term trend. It’s the long-term trend that matters.[/quote]
I don’t know. I doubt a solution as simple as ‘20% cut in faculty&staff salaries, take it or leave it’ will help reduce the out-of-pocket cost of college education. I know a CS guy who moved from a bank to UCSD back in 2006 with 20% paycut and his department was reduced from 5 to 3 guys since then.
I don’t think it is possible to produce a world-competitive college graduate at inflation-adusted 1970’s cost.
