Why are american universities so expensive?

It's an absolute joke that you have to pay 60 000++ dollars for a bachelors degree at an American school, even when it's done by distance. Private universities in Scandinavia and Switzerland are nowhere near as expensive even on campus. And there the cost of living is far higher than in America....

 

It's entirely possible to get a US Bachelor's for less than $60K, even with recent inflation.

 

..much less than $60k when done by distance. My undergrad was under $20k (all distance)... particularly via distance learning, the options are generally cheaper than if you were to go to a B&M. ..and the beauty of the cost of living is that you can enjoy quality education from your home in Switzerland or Scandinavia while taking a US degree, if you so desire.

 

All you have to do is shop around a little. You can earn a RA bachelor's degree for under $20k or even under $10k if you just do a little research.

 

Because (1) unlimited amounts of loan money, (2) administrative bloat

 

Because a Bachelors degree actually means something in the US. In Canada, Education is a lot cheaper but undergraduate education has lost a lot meaning, it has become almost a high school diploma.

In Europe, it is the same thing, it is common to see in France people with two or three undergraduate degrees as education is free but the market does not pay for this level of education anymore.

Free or cheap education is not good for the economy, if the education becomes free then education loses value. I think is better a system like the US where education is not free but people actually can use their degrees for advancement and better salaries. This is also reflected in faculty salaries, the US has the best salaries for faculty in the world unlike some places in Europe where faculty is paid peanuts.

 

Come to Florida: cheap housing, no state income tax and our school tuition is also cheap at the public universities and colleges.
Also, do some CLEPing and you can reduce your costs significantly.

 

Because American faculty, administrators and staff and expensive (which accounts for the highest percentage of a university's budget).

 

Greed would be the best word to describe it !!

 

I'd tend toward agreement with this. The American university offers degrees as commodities (for better or worse) the system is by and large tainted with institutional survival instincts. It's competition for dollars.

 

In some ways colleges are like cars. You can get a bare bones low cost compact that will get you where you want to go or you can get a luxury model with all the amenities. I've always imagined that some parents are paying for those high cost liberal arts university degrees because of 1) the prestige but also 2) some of these schools are a bit like day care centers. They actually look after these kids. Parents will call up the counseling office or the residential assistant and ask for updates "Is Muffy eating enough salad?" and all that kind of stuff. That's part of what you're getting when you pay the premium prices.

 

Rfvalve, actually the complaint that the BA has become the equivalent of a HS diploma is also heard in the US and the BA does not generally mean much other than as an entry credential (why so many students I know go right on to get a Masters). Degree inflation is in the US too.

To OP, in terms of cost, well....some foreign schools are probably more heavily subsidized in developed countries ( I believe I recall that SA degrees are subsidized and they were considering ending that for foreign students or making them pay additional fees). Second, don't confuse for profits like U of P with your state schools in the US. Someone has to pay professor salaries and that is either tuition and tax dollars or a combination.

 

THIS is the reason why colleges and universities are so expensive these days....

College students living in the lap of luxury - latimes.com

 

The apartment in this article is a private apartment complex offering a two-student apartment for $2500 a month. What is the correlation between this apartment complex and the cost of education in America?

 

There's no single answer, but one thing that should be pointed out is the concept of third-party payors. Much like with healthcare, there' little incentive to worry about the final bill if you aren't immediately responsible for it. The proliferation of $150 textbooks is one example.

 

A great question. All/most these private schools are owned by private equiity firms. Its just a business. You can get a MBA or BS without even buying a text book. All the solutions for their assignments is available on Brainmass. They are all answered by Indians (that is outsources to India too). The tuition rates depend on the market speculation and not the quality. Some private schools charge almost $1000/credit but the schools are not AACSB accredited and are very poor in quality. They just have namesake professors who give A grade to everybody. See whats happening to Trident for example.
Universities in third-world countries like India cost less than $100/year. and we outsource to India. They are smarter than us. We are not creating jobs thro education. These schools are getting rich and the students end up with huge debt. This need to change.

 

The article talks about the higher expectations in general that students (and parents) have of the accommodations and facilities at colleges and universities these days. Yes, the apartment mentioned in the article is privately owned, but all one has to do is tour nearly any school these days to see just how extravagant things have become. Fitness clubs, dining "experiences," fancy sports facilities, and on and on.

From the article...

"USC and UCLA have made strides in recent years to outgrow their former images as commuter campuses where most students left at the end of the day. Both now draw more students from around the world, some of whom pay tuition of more than $40,000 a year and want housing that meets their refined tastes. Old dormitories are being refurbished and new units that house fewer students are being built to the latest environmental standards."

Tuition rates are increasing at a pace that is three times the rate of inflation. Higher education seems to be one of the few sectors of the economy where business is booming and people are still queuing up to pay.

 

There are ways to save on tution. Myu second degree I went to a B & M college and paid less than public school. Here is a dirty little secret they don't tell you. You can get a military discount at certain collges if you declare your main campus is the one located near or on a miltary base. You do not need to be a member or a former meber of the military to get this discount. The military offers free rooms to get the university to have an extension program there, in exchange they have to offer a discount to all students that attend that campus. Also, at the time the internet was just starting tog et popular, but no amazon, googlebooks or ebooks, but the Canadian dollar was $.50 to one US $1. So if a book was priced $100 in US it was also proced $100 in Canadian. So I just ordered it from Canada. Wel, near the end of my Masters I stopped buying books and just used google books. it was browser based, so when my time limit ran out I switched browsers.

 

Can you get most textbooks on that Web site from big publishers? I found most of the books I want just say "Preview" and I could only see a few pages. Where you using some kind of service that lets you unlock many of the pages?