Looks like you debunked it by picking a year particularly favorable to your point of view. There was a temporary influx of funding from the massive COVID relief/stimulus packages.
The article was written in 2019. There was no cherry picking. That was the most recent data available to them.
And yet tuition didn't go down as cbpp would've predicted. We at least agree that we ought to use the most recent data when determining whether something has actually been debunked, correct? They used the most recent data at the time, but it's no longer 2018.
That's not what they predicted. Why would you expect it to go down? It was a one year boost in funding and the states didn't condition the funding on tuition prices.
Universities _will not_ reduce tuition without being forced to do so.
Universities _cannot_ reduce tuition without more funding.
Because part of the article's premise is that the high sticker price is dissuading people from enrolling. The cost of running a university net public funding was significantly reduced from 2018 to 2021. When your margin goes up and your demand goes down below capacity, then prices go down due to price equilibrium, since the marginal benefit from enrolling one more student is positive, assuming a student can pick from more than one university. But this didn't happen, which means the prices are being driven by some other force (maybe student loans that can never be discharged through bankruptcy?)
Maximizing revenue frequently involves demand being below capacity. If reducing tuition by 20% increases enrollment by less than 20%, it's revenue-negative. My university was the most expensive public school in my state and still enrolled more students every year while increasing (nominal?) tuition despite not being the flagship or a party school. There is a lot more demand for spots in good schools than there are spots available. Universities aren't socks. Students don't pick one because it's 5% cheaper. They're not nearly as price-sensitive as you'd think.
You're completely derailing the conversation. Are you looking at the discussion as a whole and trying to stay on topic or just responding to my last comment and looking for a gotcha?
2010
6310 tuition
5790 federal
10420 state
22520 total (16210 from public funding)
2020
8160 tuition
6010 federal
12020 state
26190 (18030 from public funding)
Now if public funding went down $2000 and tuition went up $2000, that would lend evidence to the idea that collapsed public funding resulted in higher tuition. Yet public funding went up $2000 and tuition went up $2000. And you say this is because market forces don't apply and that the state isn't tying funding to tuition. That may be what you believe, but I don't see how any of this refutes the alternative explanation (that it has to do with student loans not being subject to bankruptcy).
Market forces do apply to colleges. Their customers simply are not price-sensitive.
Universities are not businesses. Tuition is frequently less than the cost of teaching students. The cost of an education has risen independently of how that education is paid for. Removing loans from the equation wouldn't lower prices because prices are set by costs, not by profits. There is a ton of administrative bloat, but universities will always prefer to not fire employees over reducing costs for transient members of their school.
Even if it was true, it would not prove your theory that it has anything to do with student loans not being subject to bankruptcy. Universities do not issue loans. Bankruptcy leaves lenders holding the bag, not universities. You have not given any explanation for your theory of undichargable student loans causing higher prices, you've only attempted to refute my explanation as proof that your theory is the only alternative.
> Even if it was true, it would not prove your theory that it has anything to do with student loans not being subject to bankruptcy. Universities do not issue loans.
This is factually untrue; the better universities do not, private for-profit often-predatory universities do, and those loans are subject to the same bankruptcy provisions as the federal loans issued to students at other schools. These are a part of the landscape that education policy must address.
10 years was the timespan that the government report used.
The reason why it matters whether or not you can discharge the loan is because it changes lending behavior in the first place. The baby boomers used to work entry level jobs over the summer and pay for a semester of college. In the late 70s, congress changed the bankruptcy law.
Lenders loved this because it completely changes the risk equation. It incentivized them to lend as much as possible to as many as possible. This triggered a feedback loop with colleges. They could charge more for tuition, and in turn, lenders could lend more risk free debt. Rinse and repeat. Colleges would use that extra income to take on administrative bloat and wasteful programs. Four decades later, tuition is double that of other countries, colleges are happy, lenders are happy, and graduates are getting crushed by debt.
The article was written in 2019. There was no cherry picking. That was the most recent data available to them.