Originally Posted by herenow
Originally Posted by Dude
Well, that's because the schools are caught up in an arms race of their own. They're willing to pay for certain students from the endowment, because they'll raise the academic rankings of the school. For the rest, they have to gouge them so they can continue building new buildings, unnecessary amenities, etc., in order to compete in the recruiting race.

So basically, rankings is how college got ruined for everyone.

Yay competition.

Exactly. I don't think it's a coincidence that the cost of college began to skyrocket (per Bloomberg) just after the first College Rankings were published by US News and World Report in 1983.

I remember those cost increases. I was in college in the mid-80s. I don't what role the rankings played, but I do know that roughly half of the "elite" colleges had created a de facto syndicate back then. They had annual meetings aimed at fixing prices. I am not making this up. It was a big scandal; here's a summary of the investigation.

Not long before that, people my age had started to complain about the cost of a college education becoming unaffordable and student loan burdens. I also remember that as a group, we were accused of acting entitled because those older than us had "paid their way" by working summer jobs and we were just a bunch of lazy whiners. Yeah right. The year I started, total costs were 12-13K at my college and they jumped 7-10% every year. Like a summer job and work study are going to pay those bills. I don't think so.

See also the Unified College Cost thread. Student loan debt start increasing rapidly when they reformed the bankruptcy laws in 2005.