Talk about an economic model that makes no sense. First off, there are a plethora of public and private higher education institutions to pick from in this country, so while the demand is high, the supply is even higher. Secondly, the number of adjunct professors is at an all time high and they make a fraction of the money that their tenured colleagues make. Therefore, most institutions are saving a boatload. Add to that many corporations pour millions of dollars into research programs which actually saves themselves money, which in turn helps Higher Ed.

Now we come to the strange topic of endowments which range from the hundreds of millions of dollars like our beloved Alma mater has, to billions of dollars that the Ivy League enjoys. Incidentally, little ole Dennison which has about 10% of our student body has a larger endowment than we do. Why don't they use this money to ease ridiculous tuition levels? For example, the Catholic Diocese of Wichita charges no tuition for their high schools because long ago they began an endowment fund, the first of it's kind. Yet, most Higher Ed institutions had endowment funds in place when the Wyandotte Tribe outnumbered Catholics, long before the Diocese of Wichita came into being. If the Diocese of Wichita can do it, so can Higher Ed. These endowments are a shell game, where students, parents, most professors and taxpayers come out the losers.

The answer to your first question is largely yes. Though it's hard to put exact numbers on it, because it's often need-based and can be hard to know the demographics of the student body. But to give you a sense, for the child of a family with an income between $75-110k, the average cost at Oberlin's $24k annually. The sticker price is $71k. At lower income levels, the average cost can be as low as $11,000 annually.

As far as I can tell, there's no difference between the most common degrees awarded in Canada and the United States. What leads you to your conclusion that you "don't. . .have students getting a degree in under or unemployable majors"? Seems like the offerings and numbers are basically identical in the US and Canada.

As for subsidizing higher ed, Canada spends $9 billion dollars annually subsidizing higher ed costs. And that's not an arbitrary number. They spend $9 billion because students owe about $9 billion per year. So they're basically subsidizing higher ed at 100%, though distributing it on a need-based basis so as to allow universities to raise money and improve quality.

For what it's worth, the US subsidizes higher ed at a really huge rate, too. The difference is that we funnel our subsidies through a network of private lenders and allow them to make no-risk loans and make very nice margins off of those no-risk loans, for some reason.




[/QUOTE]I don't have the specific answers to your questions. It was mainly based on my conversation with that couple and other similar situations. The article linked below seems to indicate that Canadian colleges and universities are much cheaper. Also, it seems to indicate that more experimental majors are offered in the US compared to Canada.

https://www.insider.com/college-canada-us-differences-201...

[QUOTE=Mike Johnson]

How long can small, non-elite private schools survive? Many have closed and many more have found themselves on the edge of the financial abyss.

Ivy League students pay very little in actual tuition post aid. I'd venture to guess that the average tuition at Harvard's lower than the average at OU. Plenty of places put endowments to good use.

https://admissions.yale.edu/financial-aid-prospective-stu...

Probably pertains to most on this board.

Families earning between $65,000 and $200,000 (with typical assets) contribute a percentage of their yearly income towards their child’s Yale education, on a sliding scale that begins at 1% and moves toward 20%.