United States Politics Thread 46

[Raphael]

Oh, one more distressing fact. Tuition at NU when I attended was about $11,500 a year. If that had kept up with inflation, it'd be $31,500 a year. which is half the actual current total.

I'm sure you know this, Mark, but for the benefit of the non-USAmericans, this is a direct result of our odd choice of a financing model[*]. Essentially, as federal funding for education increased, so did tuition.

Now you got me curious - how on Earth does that work?

[Linguoboy]

Oh, one more distressing fact. Tuition at NU when I attended was about $11,500 a year. If that had kept up with inflation, it'd be $31,500 a year. which is half the actual current total.

I'm sure you know this, Mark, but for the benefit of the non-USAmericans, this is a direct result of our odd choice of a financing model[*]. Essentially, as federal funding for education increased, so did tuition.

Now you got me curious - how on Earth does that work?

It's known as the "Bennett hypothesis" after Reagan's Secretary of Education, William Bennett, and this is it in a nutshell:

Bennett wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Our Greedy Colleges” in which he argued that, in reaction to increased federal aid, colleges had actually increased tuition costs. This became the basis for what many now term the “Bennett hypothesis.” Bennett was making the case that, contrary to the intentions of well-meaning policymakers, increased federal aid had made college less affordable; and that instead of improving accessibility, colleges had been using the extra revenues from aid to improve their prestige.

In a market economy, the demand for goods and services responds to prices. Government subsidies, which effectively lower the prices of goods or services, inevitably increase demand. Therefore, by subsidizing tuition through federal student aid, the government creates artificially high demand for college degrees, driving tuition prices higher and increasing the overall cost for students and taxpayers. As Bennett hypothesized, if education institutions are receiving greater federal funds and students are still being charged higher tuition and fees, then the educational institutions must be capturing part of the federal aid through increasing tuition.

Source: https://www.mercatus.org/research/polic ... -education.

There have been many studies since 1987 attempting to test the validity of the Bennett hypothesis; you'll find some summarised at the link. In general, they have upheld it while providing some nuance, e.g. correlation varies based on whether aid is merit-based or need-based (with need-based aid tending to fuel tuition growth more than merit-based), on whether the colleges are public or private (with private colleges capturing more of the increase in federal aid than public), and so forth. Again, here's how the Mercatus Center article summarises the situation:

The evidence broadly suggests that institutions of higher education are capturing need-based federal aid, with private colleges capturing as much as 25 percent of the increases in federal aid through reduced institutional aid. Higher education institutions respond to increased federal aid generosity by reducing institutional aid, so that for each dollar of additional federal aid they receive, students lose between 60 cents and 83 cents of institutional aid, depending on the type of aid and institution. During 2005–2009, colleges that are eligible for federal aid raised tuition by as much as 78 percent more than colleges that are not eligible for federal aid. Overall, increased federal student aid may be responsible for generating a 102 percent increase in tuition during 1987–2010.

You might well ask, where is all this tuition money going? Parallel to the situation with corporations, a chunk of it is captured by administrators in the form of larger salaries and increased staffing. But a lot of it goes to improving the "experience" for college students, particularly undergraduates. The biggest private universities are in stiff competition for the most promising students and one of the ways they seek to attract them is by offering more in the way of facilities and services. Talk to people in my parents' generation, and you'll find that their college experience was much more bare-bones than my own, let alone what it's become standard to expect today. US college students expect comfortable housing, varied dining options, sponsored entertainment, and robust support services, from career counseling to mental health care.

Does all of this produce healthier, more well-rounded, and successful students? I think the jury is still out on that. I'm certainly not seeing a lot of evidence of that at my elite private institution, but I'm honestly not very familiar with the literature on the subject.

[Torco]

[*] I've seen it argued that it was actually a very deliberate choice on the part of the GOP to keep the college-educated docile by saddling them with debt, but I haven't done due diligence to investigate this. Seems like that approach would eventually backfire, since it would build a resentful underclass, but so far US politicians haven't really lost betting against ordinary citizens' willingness to upset the status quo.

this is a shitty argument, but gpt says to me that the laws involved in establishing this financing model (ostensibly the Higher Education Act of 1965, Student Loan Reform Act of 1993, College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013, Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, none of which i know about) are all either bipartisan or democrat laws (prompts here https://pastebin.com/P2zpTanH). one shouldn't believe generative models willy nilly, of course, but they're generally decent at summarization... can our american friends confirm?

[Raphael]

Wow, thank you, Linguoboy, that's a really detailed and informative reply! Hm, usually I wouldn't put much stock into what Reagan Administration officials said, especially when they were talking about the evils of government interventions in the markets, but if the guy's hypothesis has really been confirmed by a lot of studies, there's probably something to it.

[Ares Land]

Wow, thank you, Linguoboy, that's a really detailed and informative reply! Hm, usually I wouldn't put much stock into what Reagan Administration officials said, especially when they were talking about the evils of government interventions in the markets, but if the guy's hypothesis has really been confirmed by a lot of studies, there's probably something to it.

The political bias is suspicious. The hypothesis sounds a bit like a classic libertarian gotcha. Interestingly both authors of the Mercatus study are from the Cato institute.

Some of the details at the end of the article sound like they could use a bit of explaining.

These findings demonstrate that, far from achieving increased affordability and accessibility, free college tuition actually pushes college further out of reach for the poorest students, owing to the increased competition for placement.

This refers to Chile apparently introducing free tuition in 2014. The conclusion that free tuition means poor students have more trouble when tuition is free is extremely surprising. That's fine, there are plenty of counter intuitive findings in economics, but frankly this calls for a lot more detail.
@Torco: I'd love to hear your views on the subject!

I'm also somewhat surprised that it never occurs

In the meantime: libertarians are arguing that, through occult economic forces, helping people out actually hurts them, and hurting them actually helps them. I don't know about you, but I've heard that before.

The conclusion is interesting too:

In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of federal funding of higher education, policymakers should explore why around 70 percent of high school graduates are choosing a college education over vocational education. With increasing costs and stagnating payoffs, this is a serious question. Policymakers should encourage apprenticeships, on-the-job training, and vocational education, supported by changes in federal laws and regulations.

This sure sounds like giving up on the problem entirely. I've got nothing against vocational education, really... but how often do we hear about upper class kids picking apprenticeships over college education?

[Torco]

I've necroed the chilean thread and replied there, but tldr; the proposition is not as crazy as other stuff market fundamentalists say.

[zompist]

Therefore, by subsidizing tuition through federal student aid, the government creates artificially high demand for college degrees, driving tuition prices higher and increasing the overall cost for students and taxpayers.

It does make sense that increasing demand will increase prices... though there is also increased supply. E.g. there were about 11 million college students in 1980, 20 million today. And it looks like the number of 4-year universities has increased from 2000 to 3000.

During 2005–2009, colleges that are eligible for federal aid raised tuition by as much as 78 percent more than colleges that are not eligible for federal aid. Overall, increased federal student aid may be responsible for generating a 102 percent increase in tuition during 1987–2010.

This sounds dubious though. From some quick Googlng, colleges not taking federal aid basically reduces to a very small number of Christian colleges that refuse aid out of right-wing worries about The Gummint. It may well be that they've kept tuition down, but there are likely to be other far more explanatory correlations— small towns, church funding, not top faculty, no expensive labs, no football.

Plus your answer on where the money is going is quite apropos. It's not like the feds forced schools to compete on amenities.

[bradrn]

In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of federal funding of higher education, policymakers should explore why around 70 percent of high school graduates are choosing a college education over vocational education. With increasing costs and stagnating payoffs, this is a serious question. Policymakers should encourage apprenticeships, on-the-job training, and vocational education, supported by changes in federal laws and regulations.

This sure sounds like giving up on the problem entirely. I've got nothing against vocational education, really... but how often do we hear about upper class kids picking apprenticeships over college education?

I have a slightly heterodox view here: I think that much of what universities do now, should be moved over to vocational training. In my experience, universities are pretty good at doing research, and pretty terrible at doing other stuff. Similarly, university lecturers are pretty good at training people to do research, but generally aren’t great at training people for other kinds of jobs.

Problem is, most students today go to university with no intention of continuing research: they want to get training for a job. I feel this is the root of a lot of problems currently faced by the university system, which simply wasn’t designed for this kind of pressure. On the other hand, vocational education was designed from the start to do this. There’s really no reason why it can’t be extended to include jobs currently associated with universities: programming, engineering, teaching, management, and so on. (Indeed my father did IT in a vocational school (or ‘Tech’) in South Africa, and it’s served him very well over his career.)

Of course, this kind of thing is probably politically impossible nowadays, at least in Australia where vocational training has been stripped down to almost nothing. So here’s an alternate suggestion: merge the two systems, so that one institution provides both kinds of training. But I haven’t fully thought through the implications of this.

[Ares Land]

What I object to, really, is the idea that you can't possibly have higher education without ludicrous tuition fees, so we might as well send everyone to vocational school.

Here in France, many IT students these days go through a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system, combining both formal education and apprenticeship: as far as I can see both companies and students seem reasonably happy about it.

[Linguoboy]

Wow, thank you, Linguoboy, that's a really detailed and informative reply! Hm, usually I wouldn't put much stock into what Reagan Administration officials said, especially when they were talking about the evils of government interventions in the markets, but if the guy's hypothesis has really been confirmed by a lot of studies, there's probably something to it.

The political bias is suspicious. The hypothesis sounds a bit like a classic libertarian gotcha. Interestingly both authors of the Mercatus study are from the Cato institute.

Yeah, there's a reason why I didn't quote their conclusions. Despite the axe they're grinding, the first part of the article seems methodologically sound to me.

In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of federal funding of higher education, policymakers should explore why around 70 percent of high school graduates are choosing a college education over vocational education. With increasing costs and stagnating payoffs, this is a serious question. Policymakers should encourage apprenticeships, on-the-job training, and vocational education, supported by changes in federal laws and regulations.

This sure sounds like giving up on the problem entirely. I've got nothing against vocational education, really... but how often do we hear about upper class kids picking apprenticeships over college education?

Upper class kids barely need an education. They grow up with the sort of connexions and opportunities that middle-class kids need to attend college to access.

I think part of the answer here is culture. Despite the fact that my father is a first-generation college grad and my mother is barely second-gen, they were already so firmly middle-class in outlook that it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to a prestigious four-year college. My sister's kids are already beginning to think differently. The oldest used the first two years of college to realise that she'd really be more comfortable in vocational training and the second-oldest initially wasn't going to attend college at all. My mother was so dismayed at this prospect that she contacted both me and my brother for advice. I don't think she liked my opinion that not attending a four-year college is a rational choice for kids today given current debt loads.

[Linguoboy]

Back on the subject of the presidential race, it's hard not to cackle in glee at what a liability Vance has turned out to be:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... oll-rating

One of the more eyepopping statistics: Vance has the lowest approval rating of a non-incumbent VP in at least 44 years. Typically Veep candidates see a boost of about 20 points right after the convention. Vance was underwater going into the RNC and is currently polling an average of -6 on approval. There's been speculation about Trump dumping him but no clear sign of that yet.

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the speculation about Harris' running mate; we'll know soon enough. Currently I'm just enjoying how oxygen it's taking up in the politicosphere right now, distracting from critiques of Harris and breathless coverage of Trump.

[Travis B.]

Vance is so unpopular that people don't care that the whole sectional relations thing isn't true, at least as according to the original Twitter^H^H^H^H^H^H^HX post -- just the idea of it is highly amusing, and it just sounds like something that Vance would probably actually have done. The AP fact-check retraction of course only threw more gasoline on the fire.

[Raphael]

All I have to say about the whole veepstakes thing is that I quite like this post I saw on Bluesky:

noagegap.png (225.21 KiB) Viewed 2478 times

[Linguoboy]

I can't make heads or tails of Trump's decision to address the National Association of Black Journalists today at their annual convention in Chicago. It's the worst kind of format for him: a panel discussion where he's being fact-checked in real time. Most of the crowd was hostile to begin with--the co-chair even stepped down over the decision--and he only antagonised them by making wildly false statements and attacking the moderators, especially senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott.

Generally when demagogues confront hostile audiences, it's so they can film the resulting clash and cherrypick the footage to create videos with titles like "Conservative politician DESTROYS liberal cuck". But it's hard to see how Trump could get any good soundbites out of this kind of event. Successful Black professionals are absolute masters at keeping their calm in these sorts of situations, so they not going to give the kinds of "unreasonable" reactions that get alt-righters so wet, and there's no way he's going to successfully play "gotcha" with actual journalists.

I just can't fathom who made the decision to go ahead with this and what his campaign thinks it will gain from it.

[Travis B.]

I can't make heads or tails of Trump's decision to address the National Association of Black Journalists today at their annual convention in Chicago. It's the worst kind of format for him: a panel discussion where he's being fact-checked in real time. Most of the crowd was hostile to begin with--the co-chair even stepped down over the decision--and he only antagonised them by making wildly false statements and attacking the moderators, especially senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott.

Generally when demagogues confront hostile audiences, it's so they can film the resulting clash and cherrypick the footage to create videos with titles like "Conservative politician DESTROYS liberal cuck". But it's hard to see how Trump could get any good soundbites out of this kind of event. Successful Black professionals are absolute masters at keeping their calm in these sorts of situations, so they not going to give the kinds of "unreasonable" reactions that get alt-righters so wet, and there's no way he's going to successfully play "gotcha" with actual journalists.

I just can't fathom who made the decision to go ahead with this and what his campaign thinks it will gain from it.

I thought the very same thing. When I heard about his addressing the National Association of Black Journalists and what went down, I thought "what was his campaign thinking?"

[Raphael]

He wanted to get footage of Black people booing him?

Edit: Or perhaps, having no self-awareness, he really thought he would be able to rhetorically destroy the people he was talking to.

[Ares Land]

Apparently the idea was to make some outrageous point about Harris?

Back on the subject of the presidential race, it's hard not to cackle in glee at what a liability Vance has turned out to be:

I'm similarly happy about that.
I thought the thing about Republicans being 'weird' was, well, weird but it does seem to hit a nerve.

[Linguoboy]

I thought the thing about Republicans being 'weird' was, well, weird but it does seem to hit a nerve.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it to be sure. After all, I grew up being called "weird" and only turned a corner when I learned to embrace the label. But someone on the nets made an observation about people who were "good weird" being able to tell the difference between being called "good weird" and "bad weird" whereas those people who are "bad weird" can't, which I think is broadly true. You can't hurt me by calling me "weird" because I'd much rather be this kind of weirdo than be what you call "normal".

I'd much rather "bad weird" were being called "creepy", which seems to fit what it is better--it's not that Vance's et al. views are significantly different from the mainstream that makes them negative, but the invasive and abusive way in which they are different. Regardless of what I think, though, the campaign seems to be having the desired effect of making the targets really really annoyed and defensive.

Just check out this new ad from an outfit calling itself "Won't PAC Down": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP5Gx18D4-c.

[Ares Land]

I thought 'weird' had more positive connotations, based on things like the slogan 'Keep Portland Weird'. But hey, it seems to work.

Just check out this new ad from an outfit calling itself "Won't PAC Down": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP5Gx18D4-c.

I really like how this pulls no punches, for a change.

Vance might be half the inspiration; I mean, he really looks like a serial killer, doesn't he?

[Travis B.]

My friends and I called ourselves "the weirdos" when we were in elementary school, specifically with the positive sense of "weird".