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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (66004)	4/10/2018 5:57:06 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 358075

Well, as I pointed out, the rise in tuition and fees has a completely separate dynamic than the rise in total cost Hardly completely separate. Government spending went up. Tuition and fees only went up because costs increased even faster than government spending did. Yes because government covers part of the cost the percentage change in tuition and fees can be different than the change in total costs, but its no a seperate dynamic. Tuition and fees are higher because the costs are higher. * If the % of tuition and fees as a fraction of total college cost shifts from 20% to 60% that could be a factor of 3x increase in tuition and fees which could occur EVEN IF COST REMAINED FLAT. Government spending went up. So cost didn't remain flat. If the percentage students paid went from 20 to 60%, even as governments were spending more they could only do so if the costs increased rapidly. If costs remained flat, then the government spending would have to go down, but it didn't (except for small decreases for a short time in some places, within a trend of broader and much larger overall increases). Assume government spending + fees and tuition equal government cost (in other words ignore for the moment my point in the footnote). Since government spending went up. If costs were flat, student spending would have had to have gone down not up. Even if government spending was flat (and it wasn't it was up). Your scenario doesn't work. It only works if government spending was slashed which doesn't remotely resemble what happened. Even though it went up, I'll work with flat to make things simpler. According to you government spending was 80 percent. Lets make that Student Spending is 2. Government Spending is 8. Total Spending is 10. Then student spending increased to 60 percent. If government spending was flat at 8, and now only represented 40 percent of the total than the total costs would have to have doubled to 20. Student spending would be 12. Sure fees and tuition increased 6 times, while total spending only doubled in this scenario, but remember government spending also increased so those two figures would actually be closer. Also I don't think that fees and tuition have actually grown to be three times as large of percentages as they where before, I just went with your figures to illustrate the point. Ignoring other costs and spending, again assuming tuition and fees and government money equal costs of education. For any situation where government spending is flat or grows (and for most which its only cut modestly), any large increase in the percentage paid by the student can only come from an increase in total costs. Which would then say nothing at all bout Baumol's cost disease. It was never a claim about Baumol's cost disease. Again the analysis in the study about cost disease was an analysis of the spending not of student fees and tuition, or of income from any or all sources. The chart your objecting to is technically accurate, somewhat misleading (for the reasons you lay out and perhaps for the reason I point out in the footnote below), but broadly connects with reality (for the reason I point out above). But most of all the chart isn't really relevant to the claim about Baumol's cost disease. It was a bit of extra data thrown in, not part of the actual argument for the main point. Repeating from my last post with emphasis added - ------------ While this phenomenon certainly occurs, its role in soaring college tuition has been greatly exaggerated. In a 2012 study, economists Robert Martin and Carter Hill analyzed the various trends underlying ever-higher expenditures at public research universities to determine how much of the increases were attributable to Baumol’s cost disease. Salaries and benefits at universities rise faster than inflation, consistent with the cost disease. But compensation can rise for different reasons. If labor costs rise because the compensation of professors rises, the cost disease is likely responsible. But if labor costs rise because universities are hiring different sorts of employees, such as administrators, something besides the cost disease must be the culprit. Using this method, the authors determine that Baumol’s cost disease accounts for just 16% of the total increase in spending at public research universities from 1987 to 2008. forbes.com -------- Note they analyzed the expenditures not the tuition and fees, or the income from any source. Points about the sources of income, your points, my points and Cooper's points (or the points of his source) are all peripheral to that at best, in a sense totally irrelevant. Of course the article doesn't really develop any argument for that specific 16% figure (and personally it seems a bit low to me) but if you want to examine that in more detail you can look to the paper he linked to pdx.edu *That is to the extent that what they charge + government aid actually does equal costs. There are other sources of income besides those too, and other things colleges and universities do with the money besides educating students, or even besides incremental costs for additional students whether or not those costs are related to education.