I have a wild idea, bear with me, maybe education shouldn't be a profit-making industry.
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
97 points (95.3% liked)
News
37195 readers
5155 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't disagree, but the article isn't talking about for-profit universities. Private and for-profit are not the same thing (though it doesn't go out of its way to point out the difference). Most private universities in the US are nonprofit. From the article:
There are about 3,700 two- and four-year public and private degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. That's already down from a peak of 4,726 in 2012. Almost all that have closed since then were private, for-profit schools, which enjoyed a brief boom before crashing under the weight of consumer discontent and increased regulation.
Many converging reasons explain why private, nonprofit colleges and universities, too, are now under existential strain.
None of that changes the fact that tuition is so absurdly out of control that it certainly feels like a scam. There are a ton of reasons for these rising costs. But for most schools, profit actually isn't the reason.
The fuck you mean tons of reasons. It's administrator pay. At some point universities decided they needed to pay CEO salaries to "attract the best talent", which just means giving the dean or whatever everyone's tuition money. Many of them get paid tens of millions a year while grad students barely survive and professors spend most of their time applying for grants and still making much less than they could in industry. Basically everything bad in our society is caused by some greedy leech cunt stealing from normal people.
Administrative cost is certainly part of it. That's not just higher salaries, but the size of administrations as more positions are added to fill different roles. But honestly that's not even the biggest factor, especially for these small to mid size private schools that are on the chopping block. Those administrators aren't making millions.
The biggest factor as another commenter already pointed out is the elimination or reduction of state support, shifting the burden to the student. You may ask how this applies to private schools. True, they have never received operational support like public universities. But they have historically received state funded research grants, tax exemptions, subsidies, land, etc., not to mention the students who receive government funded tuition grants. All of that government support has been reduced or eliminated over the years, and the burden has shifted to the student.
Another huge factor is the fact that there is no bankruptcy for student loans. This means lenders have no problem lending ridiculous amounts of money to kids who can't even legally buy a beer. When there's no limit to how much can be borrowed, it incentivizes schools to raise the cost simply because they can.
A huge factor that isn't discussed openly very often is the fact that higher tuition allows schools to shape their student body the way they want. They can offer assistance to the students they want most that way and weed out unremarkable ones. They can attract some of the best and brightest, and the rest of the students are basically footing the bill for them.
Another big factor is the campus expansion and renovation projects that are constantly happening to attract students. The infamous "lazy river" projects and other luxuries designed to attract students so they can compete with other schools but drive up the price tag. State of the art stadiums, gyms, dining, maker spaces, etc. all costs money. The amenities that are standard today would never have been dreamed of 25 years ago.
Anyway, these are some of the ones off the top of my head. I know there's more. Yes administrative cost is part of it, and yes you should be mad that the tuition is so out of control, but to boil it down to greedy administrators doesn't really capture the majority of the problem.
Ain't that the fuckin truth. Greedy fucking leeches stealing from the worker. I'm sure there's a cartoon somewhere with a dude covered in leeches that have all the block sucking middle men on them. Insurance companies, car dealerships, etc etc
There are a ton of reasons for these rising costs.
I know people who study this specifically and I've learned a lot from them that has informed my own policies.
The most significant reason is that, in the 80s, we all elected to collectively abandon the social contract and defund education at the state level to move the burden to the individual student.
The truth is the one most important reason for this phenomenon is that we, as a society, do not value education. (Well, ymmv, I'm in the US.)
Fair enough! I definitely didn't think much when I made my comment, I was just angry.
I guess it's really only a matter of profits vs. making an already massive endowment even larger.
The end result for students isn't really that much different.
If they had massive endowments they would not be on the chopping block.
Small, private colleges rarely have the money that people seem to think.
Good. A lot of private schools are predatory and deserve to close.
Yeah, because they suck.
Businesses that suck in a shrinking market, are going to close. Education is a business in the USA, not a public good.
I knew people who went to these schools... they were often indebted for poor quality educations in basic liberal arts fields and spent their 20s doing service jobs because nobody wants to hire someone from a fourth rate no name college who reads/writes at a 10th grade level. A lot of my peers who went to these schools got scammed, and frankly had no business going to college in the first place.
Good riddance. Students and governments are better off expanding their flagship and 1st tier institutions and making those more accessible by expanding their seats and their aid packages. Kids who get C averages in high school shouldn't be going to college.
I agree with nearly all of your sentiment here, other than “people with C’s shouldn’t go to college”.
I like Scott Galloway’s take: colleges and universities are the opportunity to take the unremarkable and give them a chance at being remarkable.
Of course there needs to be a cut off here, but I’d say curriculum is a better indicator than average letter grade. Often, I’d rather work with someone who has really struggled to earn mediocre grades, but knuckled down and made it through because they wanted it that badly. Because that’s most of life after school. Most of my friends that struggled after school were the ones that never had to try when we were in school. Then they graduated and life hit them in the face for the first time.
My undergrad degree is in Computer Science and I really struggled because I didn’t have a quality maths foundation. That said, I worked my ass off and graduated with a 3.8 in my major, and now am the Sr. Solutions Architect at my city’s largest employer, soon to clinch a director position. College enabled me to do that and fostered a life long curiosity of all things.
My partner is another good example. She barely earned C’s in high school, worked at a grocery store, and decided she wanted something better. She went to community college when she was ready, and now owns two extremely successful businesses. She would have not done well in trades.
Having access to higher education at the “right” time for people is critical. And as you said, also having options for those who aren’t motivated to continue in higher education but still want to make a fair wage, like trade school.
*in the US.
Yeah that's kinda hinted at with the term 'for-profit college'
This is about "nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, " These are NOT for profit colleges.
Yep, goes without saying at this point.
Almost as if making higher education a privatized tiered for-profit scam instead of publicly available paid-for-by-our-fucking-tax-dollars free accessible opportunity was a bad idea!
It would be nice if you put the country in the title. The majority of Lemmy users are not American.
It would be nice if you put the country in the title.
I happen to agree with you but Rule 4 sort of prevents that.
Do the majority also live in places with private universities?
I'm not sure, but a quick search says that 192 countries have private institutes of higher education of some kind. So, I'm guessing the answer is yes.
This is due to the demographic crunch. There are just fewer young people to go around.
Less choices from smaller trade focused colleges like the one in the article will focus into larger city focused colleges.
The article is talking about a farming specific school that was small and hands on. Some tasks can be learned in a trade school, but stuff like running a farm will be learned from family, or in places like this.
So you'll have to be born into it or be wealthy enough to go to a top tier school to run a farm. Now working on the farm would be a trade.
You can learn exactly the same things with accreditation or without it. Especially now that there are fewer standards of excellency. Are there any jobs for the many college graduates everywhere that still are being pumped out, with all of their degrees? I don't think there are.
You can, but accreditation aims to prove that you have.
I don’t think there are.
My Son will graduate from College this May, was recruited to a company a year ago, and will start work in June. You will not be hired for his kind of work without a Degree either, at least not in the United States. The jobs are out there and many of the better ones require the Accreditation.
That might be true, but a lot of unaccredited institutions are that way because they're no good.
I don’t think there are.
There are. Here's some anecdata: two of my kids went to college straight after high school. Both got jobs within a month of graduating and are still employed. One graduated with an arts degree.
The other kid started a small business, did great at that until Covid killed demand. He then apprenticed in a trade, made some decent money at that, and has now gone back to college to move up the food chain from his chosen trade. He's already got offers.
So I won't overgeneralize, but I can confidently say that it still works for some. And, when I graduated a very long time ago, it wasn't a cakewalk then, either. A degree was never a guarantee of a job. That was a myth. I got my degree at the start of a recession and classmates of mine who were smart, hardworking people, struggled for months or years. I lucked my way into a job because I discovered that an interviewer was the cousin of my college advisor. They talked, and I ended up learning some very interesting tech and doing world travel.
I'm not saying there are no jobs. Your specific example proves this. I'm saying that the percentage of graduates getting jobs in their chosen field is rather low, while colleges and universities throughout the land keep pumping out graduates.
Just what we need, Americans to be DUMBER.
That is the goal of Republicans, yes. They've been working on it for 50+ years.
What will happen to the lambs?!?