It’s impossible to work your way through college nowadays
We have to ask ourselves why college is so expensive.<p>When some people read articles like this, they call for more government aid to students. "We need to help young, hard working students from unprivileged backgrounds to pay for college!" Their hearts are certainly in the right place, and it isn't an unreasonable idea at first glance.<p>However, could this idea be part of the problem? Maybe giving people free money for college isn't the best idea.<p>There are four ways to spend money:<p>1) You spend your own money on yourself<p>2) You spend someone else's money on yourself<p>3) You spend your money on someone else<p>4) You spend someone else's money on someone else<p>When you spend your own money on yourself, you are very selective with how that money is spent. Not only do you gain from what you buy, you also lose money you could use to buy other things. The other three situations are ones in which being selective isn't as important to the spender.<p>Why does this matter? When people pay for college themselves, we are in situation 1; they have an incentive to choose a college they can afford while still being a great place to learn. When a student gets free money proportional to tuition, they can choose a school that charges ridiculously high rates for tuition. (Student loans are a middle ground. They are still spending money on themselves, but people the age of college students tend to be more frivolous with loans than money they earned, so they are still less interested in the price.)<p>The more students that get free money for college, the higher the cost of college becomes, because the equilibrium price of college gets distorted. If all student aid disappeared tomorrow, then certainly the cost of college would decrease.<p>If colleges get more money, then where does it go? Certainly not directly to education. It goes to fancy buildings to impress donors, and supporting the ultimate cash cow: government research grants. It goes to inflating the administrative staffs and inflating the salaries of the highest ranked members of that staff. If it was possible to pay for college on minimum wage, I wonder why we ever changed the system.