Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing.

The point here, which McDonald misses in her desire to attack "political correctness" is that the diversity office deanlets are not special. All of the new administrative positions that have been produced by the university system are being protected from budget cuts, regardless of how nice they sound to readers of the Nation. Higher education is proliferating with new administrative positions and titles, most of varying degrees of uselessness, that indeed include diversity-related positions and titles, but the problem has really nothing at all to do with political correctness.

This seemed like a relevant tangent to the conversation:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/story/2012-05-30/college-bank-deals-big-fees/55286302/1

Basically, privatizing and monetizing the distribution of loan funds to students, so that more people can get a cut of that. <FrankSobotka>

I doubt the numbers would support the thesis suggested here, that humanities majors have a harder time finding jobs than non-humanities majors. I'd need to see some proof of that concept personally.

Humanities majors have better employment prospects, according to some article that I can't be bothered to remember where I saw. It's a stupid point.

But what if your student loans were significantly lower than they are now? Sure, bankruptcy would make sense when talking about the absurd loans of recent history where many students have no feasible way to get out from under them, but bankruptcy still sucks and I'm inclined to think people would be less willing to go though it if their loans were actually managable in the first place.

The economically rational thing to do is to get a job, find an apartment and declare bankruptcy.


IMO, the interesting comparison would be high school costs and college costs over the last 30 years. Did HS experience the same rate of inflation in terms of cost? If not, why not?

Is this a problem more like health care or more like housing? In my opinion, that's the question to ask.

The economically rational thing to do is to get a job, find an apartment and declare bankruptcy.

If that were true, the credit card companies would have been out of business decades ago.

If that were true, the credit card companies would have been out of business decades ago.

Unless, of course, people don't always make such decisions with an eye strictly towards economic rationality.

If that were true, the credit card companies would have been out of business decades ago.

Credit card debt is literally nothing like student loan debt. There's nothing that student loan debt providers can repossess. In addition, new graduates are unique in that they have very little downside to declaring bankruptcy, while cc debtors typically have more consequence.

Bankruptcy is only on your credit score for up to 10 years, I believe, and there are ways to raise your score during that time. I will be paying off my student loans for a total of 20 years. Were the option available to me, I absolutely would have declared bankruptcy as soon as I graduated and I would be much better off for it now.

If student loans were dischargeable, in retrospect -- I guess it would have been the best option for me, too.

I doubt the numbers would support the thesis suggested here, that humanities majors have a harder time finding jobs than non-humanities majors. I'd need to see some proof of that concept personally.

My understanding is that STEM graduates indeed do better finding jobs than non-STEM graduates, but humanities and social science majors outperform business / education / health / communication majors. Humanities and social science departments effectively teach students key skills for working life, and it should be expected that they do a fine job preparing people for future employment.

I don't think everyone should be doing STEM - people have different skills and different tastes, and the world can't run on scientists alone - so I think that generally if you're not a STEM kind of person, and you are a going to college kind of person, the humanities and the social sciences are the way to go.

If that were true, the credit card companies would have been out of business decades ago.

Unless, of course, people don't always make such decisions with an eye strictly towards economic rationality.

Strictly? No, of course not. But people here are really underselling how serious bankruptcy is, and how much it can mess up your life. Nuking your credit, eliminating yourself from home/auto/business loans, and potentially harming your employment prospects for a decade is not automatically superior to paying down manageable debt.

When our funding gets cut, we either have to make cuts or pass the costs along to students.

This is true, but my understanding is that tuition has increased at a rate way beyond the amount needed to sustain the school after budget cutbacks. Most schools are also paying through the nose for a cascading increase in "deanlets" - new subdivided adminstrative positions - as well as all the facility improvements discussed on the last page. The problems in higher education aren't unrelated to budget cutbacks at the state level, but they go well beyond that issue.

Those other factors are hugely important, and I didn't mean to suggest that they weren't. But one of the reasons you're seeing this problem come to a head is that, in the wake of the crisis, tuition keeps rising, while the quality of the product has leveled off. And the return on investment has become a lot less certain, due to the cratered job market. You're still far better off going to college than not, but if you buy the product as they're packaging it, you're pretty well screwed for a substantial stretch of your life.

Just saw this note from Furtado on the Ricketts thread:

Rickey swipes another one, eh?

Credit card debt is literally nothing like student loan debt. There's nothing that student loan debt providers can repossess. In addition, new graduates are unique in that they have very little downside to declaring bankruptcy, while cc debtors typically have more consequence.

They're both unsecured debts, no real difference. You can't repossess 6 months worth of bumming around on beaches, heavy drinking and BJs either. Seriously, pissing away your financial life until you're 32 is a lousy idea. Not necessarily the worst idea depending on circumstances, but it's not a great one.

Rickey swipes another one, eh?

Rickey's got an eye on that Nats thread too.

They're both unsecured debts, no real difference. You can't repossess 6 months worth of bumming around on beaches, heavy drinking and BJs either. Seriously, pissing away your financial life until you're 32 is a lousy idea. Not necessarily the worst idea depending on circumstances, but it's not a great one.

You have to make payments on credit cards as you earn the debt. That's a pretty big difference. Also, you have to demonstrate a pattern of paying back debt before you get enough in unsecured credit to spend 6 months bumming around on the beach. And finally, people don't generally make decisions that screw themselves over for 10 years in exchange for one really awesome vacation. So yeah, not really the same at all.

I think that what you don't understand is that the current system involves pissing away your financial life until you're 32 (or much more!). If you take out loans for the cost of a pretty basic lifestyle for four years (edit: plus tuition), you have 100K in debt. That pretty much destroys your financial life for 15 years or more.

Strictly? No, of course not. But people here are really underselling how serious bankruptcy is, and how much it can mess up your life. Nuking your credit, eliminating yourself from home/auto/business loans, and potentially harming your employment prospects for a decade is not automatically superior to paying down manageable debt.

Not trying to undersell it at all; apologies if that's how I came across. I was simply pointing out that even if it were the right choice, that doesn't mean people would make it.

Another consequence: a lot of professional certifications are voided by bankruptcy. I noticed this fine print when I became a Novell Certified Network Engineer many years ago. Pretty sure Cisco certs are voided too.

I'm mostly with GF on bankruptcy / student loan debt. Bankruptcy is far less popular in this country than would be economically rational, and people have reasonably strong moral views about debt repayment which affect these outcomes. The moral weight of debt has likewise led to an increase in the negative economic consequences of bankruptcy, through policy and the credit score industry.

The place where I part ways with GF has to do with his claim that a free market in student loans would function mostly as an academic meritocracy, with deserving, good, smart students receiving the bulk of the loans. Economic outcomes - especially the avoidance of real poverty and concomitant inability to repay the loan at all - are heavily dependent on class background, and any rational loan officer would base a significant part of their decision on such non-academic factors.

If we want a merit-based system for acquiring bachelor's level education, it's going to take significant non-market investment.

I think that what you don't understand is that the current system involves pissing away your financial life until you're 32 (or much more!). If you take out loans for the cost of a pretty basic lifestyle for four years (edit: plus tuition), you have 100K in debt. That pretty much destroys your financial life for 15 years or more.

If you'd been paying attention to this thread, you'd know that I've been saying this for the past 100 posts. Make the debts dischargeable in bankruptcy and you won't HAVE such massive debts. Lenders won't make the loans and prices will have to fall. The loans that remain won't be nearly as onerous.

You have to make payments on credit cards as you earn the debt. That's a pretty big difference. Also, you have to demonstrate a pattern of paying back debt before you get enough in unsecured credit to spend 6 months bumming around on the beach. And finally, people don't generally make decisions that screw themselves over for 10 years in exchange for one really awesome vacation. So yeah, not really the same at all.

Of course they do. They take out student loans under today's conditions, don't they?

There's one surefire way to force Universities to watch for costs. Make them co-signers of the loan, colleges can charge just about whatever they want without seeing any direct consequences of it. Sure, they get pissed off students, but they get their money on their end without muss fuss.

If they were potentially on the hook for all the money they force students to borrow to attend their school, a lot of them would actively try to change their habits.

The economically rational thing to do is to get a job, find an apartment and declare bankruptcy.

If that were true, the credit card companies would have been out of business decades ago.

No. Credit cards are revolving debt. You don't get a big chunk of money (5-6 figures) up front, with no credit history, and then not have to start paying it off for several years during which you are likely accumulating no assets. The only people who get big revolving lines of credit are people who have already established themselves as creditworthy and who have something to lose if they default.

If you'd been paying attention to this thread, you'd know that I've been saying this for the past 100 posts. Make the debts dischargeable in bankruptcy and you won't HAVE such massive debts. Lenders won't make the loans and prices will have to fall. The loans that remain won't be nearly as onerous.

Oh, okay. So let's say that the cost of tuition drops in half (I don't know how this would happen, but sure). So now you have 80K in debt. Why aren't you declaring bankruptcy again?

Of course they do. They take out student loans under today's conditions, don't they?

I assume that you know that a 6 month vacation is really nothing like trying to get a college degree. I don't get the point of this comment.

If you'd been paying attention to this thread, you'd know that I've been saying this for the past 100 posts. Make the debts dischargeable in bankruptcy and you won't HAVE such massive debts. Lenders won't make the loans and prices will have to fall. The loans that remain won't be nearly as onerous.

Lenders won't make the loans because graduates will declare bankruptcy. Which is what I've been saying, and what you've been denying would happen.

6 years later, I have a BA in political science, $35,000 in debt, and last I checked, Lowe's decided I wasn't good enough to stock shelves for them.

Same process went for me in college, but then I was fortunate to discover I didn't love political science after all after actually engaging in the process for a bit, and - a false start or two later - took the first temp job I could get in a large company, and resolved to work my way up. It worked out. Not that such an option is easily open to everyone, but, you know, the degree itself hasn't stood in my way at all.

Political Science lends itself very well to working in modern business in my experience. The ability to synthesize cohesive and impressive-sounding compromises between fundamentally incompatible philosophies of how the world works is always in demand, and the process of building from apparently undeniable first principles to a towering, tottering edifice of surprising conclusions? Likewise.

They're both unsecured debts, no real difference. You can't repossess 6 months worth of bumming around on beaches, heavy drinking and BJs either. Seriously, pissing away your financial life until you're 32 is a lousy idea. Not necessarily the worst idea depending on circumstances, but it's not a great one.

You're screwed either way, really, though --

Let's say I was able to get rid of my loans through bankruptcy years ago -- during that time, my credit was hardly stellar anyway because I had big loan payments (which dominoed into things like charging the phone bill, electric, etc). Near as I can tell, now in my 30s -- I'd now be in pretty much the same financial state either way, except I'd have had an extra $35k or so spread out over the last 10 years.

More on the Bank "Financial Aid Payment Card" story in [202]:

...
It took Mario Parker-Milligan less than a semester to decide that he was paying too many fees to Higher One, the company hired by his college to pay out students' financial aid on debit cards.

Four years after he opted out, his classmates still face more than a dozen fees — for replacement cards, for using the cards as all-purpose debit cards, for using an ATM other than the two on-campus kiosks owned by Higher One.

"They sold it as a faster, cheaper way for the college to get students their money," said Parker-Milligan, 23, student body president at Lane Community College in Eugene, Ore. "It may be cheaper for the college, but it's not cheaper for the students."

Among the fees charged by Higher One, according to its website, is a $50 "lack of documentation fee" for students who fail to submit certain paperwork. The U.S. Department of Education called the charging of such fees "unallowable" in guidance to financial aid officers issued last month.

Higher One founder and Chief Operating Officer Miles Lasater said in an email that the company takes compliance with the government's rules "very seriously," and officially swears that to the government each year.

"We are committed to providing good value accounts that are designed for college students," he said, and students must review the company's fee list when they sign up for an account. He cited a study commissioned by Higher One that declared Higher One "a low-cost provider for this market." The same study found that the median fees charged to the 2 million students with Higher One accounts totaled $49 annually.

Among the fees charged to students who open Higher One accounts: $50 if an account is overdrawn for more than 45 days, $10 per month if the student stops using his account for six months, $29 to $38 for overdrawing an account with a recurring bill payment and 50 cents to use a PIN instead of a signature system at a retail store.

Let's say I was able to get rid of my loans through bankruptcy years ago -- during that time, my credit was hardly stellar anyway because I had big loan payments (which dominoed into things like charging the phone bill, electric, etc). Near as I can tell, now in my 30s -- I'd now be in pretty much the same financial state either way, except I'd have had an extra $35k or so spread out over the last 10 years.

Making big loan payments actually increases your credit rating. Well, assuming you aren't missing payments someplace else.

Lenders won't make the loans because graduates will declare bankruptcy. Which is what I've been saying, and what you've been denying would happen.

That depends on the debt burden vs. the ability to pay factored against the reality of bankruptcy really sucking. In a world where college degrees are much cheaper due to dischargeable debt, and much more valuable due to fewer people getting them, it's possible to make a rational decision that you're better off paying down your student loans as opposed to taking a bankruptcy to save a relatively small amount of money up front.

Under the current model, yes, bankruptcy is the only sane option unless you have a really small nut to carry.

Making big loan payments actually increases your credit rating. Well, assuming you aren't missing payments someplace else.

As I learned when buying a house, your credit score is much more a reflection of a lender being able to make money off of you, as it is a measure of your credit worthiness. The former, of course, being the incentive to lend to you.

That depends on the debt burden vs. the ability to pay factored against the reality of bankruptcy really sucking. In a world where college degrees are much cheaper due to dischargeable debt, and much more valuable due to fewer people getting them, it's possible to make a rational decision that you're better off paying down your student loans as opposed to taking a bankruptcy to save a relatively small amount of money up front.

Under the current model, yes, bankruptcy is the only sane option unless you have a really small nut to carry.

Except under the current model you can't discharge the loans. Only under this new model. I'm still struggling to understand how this would encourage lenders to give out loans to 18-year-olds with zero credit history.

the world can't run on scientists alone

GASP! Depressingly, I think this would come dangerously close to heresy for some.

the world can't run on scientists alone

You mean like grind them up in a wood chipper and then pour the remains into the gas tank?

In-debt humanities majors are the new biodiesel production market inefficiency.

Lenders won't make the loans because graduates will declare bankruptcy. Which is what I've been saying, and what you've been denying would happen.

Have you failed to notice lenders handing out credit cards to students for 20 years without fears of bankruptcy?

BLB -

Credit cards begin with quite low credit limits. The risk is not comparable to a $100k or more college loan.

BLB -

Credit cards begin with quite low credit limits. The risk is not comparable to a $100k or more college loan.

Exactly. In fairness I haven't been an 18-year-old for a long time, but I would be surprised to learn they are offered more than a grand in unsecured debt.

Why college is too expensive, mostly calculated by working as an IT drone for a big ten school:

Easy credit. Reduced state funding. Fancy rec center. Transforming the library into a "innovative learning space" with computers, flat screens, coffee shops, etc, because you don't learn by cracking a book. The newly created Office of Diversity with a bunch of expensive important people. (Yes, David wasn't entirely wrong). An army of IT folks (including me) to make it possible for students to enroll in classes from their iphones and a bazillion other niceties such as campus-wide wifi coverage so that I can download porn anywhere. Buildings. Buildings. More and more buildings.

Complaints that TAs can't teach? We'll found a Graduate Teaching Center (with a highly paid director and staff) which allows grad students to take teaching courses for electives and if they complete 12 hrs we'll put some stamp on their degree [I'm not sure how this helps them teach better as TAs), rather than just force every new grad student to go through a rigorous seminar when arriving on campus.

Every "problem" is solved by more and more spending, more offices, etc. Demanded by students and their helicopter parents.

Anecdotally, when I eat at chipotle 3 times a week, I buy only a burrito and feel its still too much money. Half the students around me buy a burrito, drink, and chips. Seeing undergrads drop $12 on lunch like its nothing is surprising, but daddy or a credit card makes it possible. oh, debit cards/credit cards/paying by phone and other "fake money" payments.

Credit cards begin with quite low credit limits. The risk is not comparable to a $100k or more college loan.

I knew people in the 90s who ran up $20k in debt.

The newly created Office of Diversity with a bunch of expensive important people. (Yes, David wasn't entirely wrong).

To reiterate, these Diversity Offices are being created in an environment where ####### everything that could be related to higher education is getting its own little deanlets. The underlying cause of these mostly money- and time-wasting adminstrative expansions isn't political correctness, it's the self-perpetuating nature of administrative offices in the context of the massive influx of new money from the tuition bubble.

I knew people in the 90s who ran up $20k in debt.

Not right from the start. You need to either build up your credit limit or accumulate a store of usurious-interest-derived debt in order to have that much debt on your card. The college loans are at least five times that much, up front.

Not right from the start. You need to either build up your credit limit or accumulate a store of usurious-interest-derived debt in order to have that much debt on your card.

Or have mom/dad's name on the account as well.

I started college about 40 years ago, and reading this thread is massively depressing. Tuition was around $3,100 when I started at MIT and was a bit over $4,000 when I left. Grants and loans covered just about all of it, including the old National Defense Student Loans -- 3% money at a time of high inflation. I lived in a dorm which was a converted apartment building, each living space had a separate bathroom and kitchen, and the fee was around $100 per month.

Followed that with 3 years of law school, and more loans, but when I got, I had a decent job with a big firm in NYC that easily paid the loans. I can't imagine how they do it now.

I don't remember any place known as "Central". Where was that in relation to East and West? Was it off Campus Drive going up the hill towards West Durham or down the hill going towards the swanky residential district?

"Central" was just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of residential buildings that were in between the two campuses. There wasn't a distinct Central campus, as such. 90% of the people in "Central" lived in Trent, and the rest were in these weird little four-man units that didn't have any names I ever heard.

Trent was (and maybe still is?) located on the corner of Flowers and Erwin. So, north of West campus, west of East campus, a couple blocks east of the hospital, and a hair southwest of the freeway.

What was the name of that really great used bookstore in Durham? Closed about ten years ago. I've been trying to remember, but I can't pull it out of deep storage.

Not right from the start. You need to either build up your credit limit or accumulate a store of usurious-interest-derived debt in order to have that much debt on your card. The college loans are at least five times that much, up front.

In a world without the government backing, tuition would be lower and banks wouldn't be handing out 100k up front. Which is more sensible.

To reiterate, these Diversity Offices are being created in an environment where ####### everything that could be related to higher education is getting its own little deanlets. The underlying cause of these mostly money- and time-wasting adminstrative expansions isn't political correctness, it's the self-perpetuating nature of administrative offices in the context of the massive influx of new money from the tuition bubble.

Political correctness is one facet of it, but I also mentioned the Graduate Teaching Center which is in line with what you're saying. Every "problem" is solved by an importing sounding office to justify their existence.

In a world without the government backing, tuition would be lower and banks wouldn't be handing out 100k up front. Which is more sensible.

Why would tuition be lower?

A lot of people think that college is a very important investment--so much so that they're willing to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt for it. Why wouldn't the cost of tuition go up to match what people believe it to be worth?

I understand that your argument depends on the idea of reduced demand causing tuition to lower. Why wouldn't there just be fewer suppliers? IOW--why wouldn't there be fewer colleges who charge the same amount as now (and experience the same growth in tuition as now)?

I don't remember any place known as "Central". Where was that in relation to East and West? Was it off Campus Drive going up the hill towards West Durham or down the hill going towards the swanky residential district?

"Central" was just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of residential buildings that were in between the two campuses. There wasn't a distinct Central campus, as such. 90% of the people in "Central" lived in Trent, and the rest were in these weird little four-man units that didn't have any names I ever heard.

Okay, that explains why I never heard of either Central or Trent. When I last lived in Durham (1970) and knew its layout, pretty much everything north of Campus Drive was mill housing that was being torn down to build grad student housing. Just before they started tearing down all the old houses on Swift Avenue, my GF and I rented one of them for $75 a month. It wasn't worth it.

Trent was (and maybe still is?) located on the corner of Flowers and Erwin. So, north of West campus, west of East campus, a couple blocks east of the hospital, and a hair southwest of the freeway.

Yeah, that's the one that must have been built in the early 70's, which is also when the freeway was being built.

What was the name of that really great used bookstore in Durham? Closed about ten years ago. I've been trying to remember, but I can't pull it out of deep storage.

I stopped book scouting in the Triangle sometime in the mid-90's, which is when small town dealers began sticking big city prices on their books. The only halfway decent used shop in Durham I remember was on a side street between Broad and Ninth, called "Books Do Furnish A Room". They also had comic books. Not great, but not bad. The two best stores by far were in Chapel Hill, The Book Shop and the Avid Reader, which bookended the long block of Franklin Street that also had the Colonial Drug Store, a rather infamous location BITD, but which was still there in the mid-90's.

There was also a big shop in Durham at Five Points called The Book Exchange, but that was mostly textbooks and I don't think it survived the 80's. It was kind of a sorry place to begin with.

BTW if you want to see a fabulous site devoted to old Durham architecture and history, check out OpenDurham. It's the best small city website of its type I've ever seen, a real labor of love. (Note: The site loads slowly, but it's worth the short wait.)

Greg (U)K Posted:
That was the advantage of a standard national grant. I'm assuming the $20,000 was designed for living in Toronto. In Saskatchewan it was like being a millionaire.
[...]
My choice of university was entirely based on the where the girl I happened to be seeing lived.
[...]
Unfortunately my long distance matching didn't work out quite so well...though as it turns out I thoroughly loved the place she lived so I count it as one of my better life decisions in retrospect.

Well as long as you enjoyed some quality time in her Regina...

243: thanks andy - never heard of opendurham before. (edit: but i had been on his old blog, which was very good)

as for the book exchange, it closed in '09. i'm not aware of any great used book stores around here... the area around that corner has been under slow redevelopment in recent years and is becoming a hub for solid restaurants (including my favorite sandwich place in town)

colonial closed in '96 - right before i moved there.

Why would tuition be lower?

Student loans can't be discharged --> banks take little risk in issuing loans --> greater supply of loans --> more money can be spent on college tuition --> colleges raise tuition rapidly to capture their "fair share" of that money

In short, higher tuition is a byproduct of the amount of money available to students for college, which is a byproduct of the protected status for banks when it comes to student loans. Take away those protections...

Student loans can be discharged --> banks will be far more cautious in issuing loans --> lesser supply of loans --> less money can be spent on college tuition --> colleges drop tuition levels to meet lower capacity/demand

In short, higher tuition is a byproduct of the amount of money available to students for college, which is a byproduct of the protected status for banks when it comes to student loans. Take away those protections...

Okay. So for you, higher tuition is a supply-side phenomenon. You think it's more like housing. ISTM that there's a relatively equally likely explanation that higher tuition is a demand-side phenomenon. So I'd take your formulation here:

Education is very important --> the cost of college is exceeded by the average benefit to the student --> greater demand for college education --> more money can be spent on college tuition --> colleges raise tuition rapidly to capture their "fair share" of that money

In that formulation, reducing the supply of student loans does nothing to reduce cost, and instead simply changes the debt or reduces the supply of colleges. I don't think that the supply side explanation is inherently more persuasive than the demand-side explanation, which is why I'm very skeptical of the idea that student loans can be blamed for the cost of college.

If the supply-side explanation were true, why haven't high schools experienced the same rate of growth in cost?

If you'd been paying attention to this thread, you'd know that I've been saying this for the past 100 posts. Make the debts dischargeable in bankruptcy and you won't HAVE such massive debts. Lenders won't make the loans and prices will have to fall. The loans that remain won't be nearly as onerous.

Lenders have already seriously tightened up credit and started making fewer private student loans. I worked at Sallie Mae until last year, and starting in 2008 they severely tightened up their lending policies. Several banks have dropped out of the market. The only lender that has been increasing the number of private loans is Discover and I'm not sure how they are doing it.

Sallie Mae is lobbying FOR making student loans dischargeable. It's a good idea, but it won't change how lenders' credit practices. Those changes already happened, and they don't want to lend to anyone who would end up in bankruptcy no matter what the law is.

@226 might be the most insightful thing i have ever read on the internet

--> greater demand for college education --> more money can be spent on college tuition -->

Why does greater demand lead to "more money can be spent"? People don't have more money to spend just by wanting to spend it or wishing they could spend it. It has to be available to them. I suppose what you're really arguing is that the loans exist because the cost is so high. But couldn't the same thing be said of housing--that mortgages are the way they are because the prices are so high, not vice versa? Yet price raising because of demand generally happens more incrementally than college tuition has gone up; the trick there is to get the consumer to pay a little more at a time, so he doesn't really notice till it's too late. It's exploratory. With tuition, we've seen increases of 60 percent in the course of four or five years. Businesses don't raise prices that much as an experiment, to see if people will pay. They do it because they know people will pay, because the money will be available to them through credit and they'll have no other choice.

A lot of people think that college is a very important investment--so much so that they're willing to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt for it

The 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing tightening of the job market have richly demonstrated that college is not the kind of investment that warrants such wild spending. If people were looking at going to college as an investment, there would have been a significant decrease in applications and enrollment over the past four years, as the idea that it wasn't such a good investment after all became more prevalent. Has there been such a decrease? And with that decrease in demand, there would, if tuition was demand based, have been a leveling off of tuition. Instead, it's continued increasing exponentially.

But people clearly aren't looking at going to college as an investment, because they're enrolling in ever greater numbers even though it's an increasingly bad investment. College is considered more of a social obligation than an investment; there's a stigma attached, in people's minds, to not going.

Well, that's just as good as the investment theory, right? The colleges have a captive audience and raise their tuition because of the demand. But I don't think that's it. Student loans have exploded not because of the demand, but because of the social stigma. They may have started as a stimulus package of sorts, to help people obtain educations that would create a more skilled and productive citizenry, etc., but these days they're a social program. And with the government loaning as much as it takes, the institutions increase how much it takes.