Why does a college education cost so much?

“For more than two decades, colleges and universities across the country have been jacking up tuition at a faster rate than costs have risen on any other major product or service - four times faster than the overall inflation rate and faster even than increases in the price of gasoline or health care (see the chart to the right). The result: After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has skyrocketed 439% since 1982.”

It certainly isn’t the quality of the teaching - most of your children are being taught by graduates students, and not the exalted professor’s for whom you chose the prestigious college or univerity. Once again, why does the cost keep rising?

The answer: Just keeping up with the Joneses!

“In the absence of any objective measure of the value of an education, price becomes the default yardstick. The more expensive a college is, the better the education it presumably provides. (After all, if other families were willing to pay this much to send their kids here, it must be worth it.)”

Source: CNNMoney.com

Adam Kirsch writes on the 1946 commencement address of W. H. Auden that warned of the “soft tyranny of institutions, authorities, and experts.”

“It is a message that still needs to be heard today, when the expense of higher education forces so many students to look at it as an investment, rather than an adventure.

Auden knows that, if everyone lived by the Hermetic Decalogue all the time, the world would grind to a halt. “The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,/Be like the Balkans,” he ruefully acknowledges. A society run by Hermes would be a disaster; but a society without any followers of Hermes in it would be a nightmare. That message makes “Under Which Lyre” a truly American poem, in the tradition of Emerson and Whitman and Twain, all of them defenders of the individual against the collective. The continued life of Auden’s Phi Beta Kappa poem is a reminder that, when the generals and censors and other powers of the earth are forgotten, it is the mere poet who remains.”

William Buckley writes about the factors that impact the cost of higher education:

“1) More Americans, especially in the two decades after the war, decided to attend college, making for great rises in demand. 2) Choice colleges are hotly competed for, giving them a relative immunity to market pressures. 3) Ever since the fifties, teachers have been demanding a living wage. 4) College perquisites increased; academic offerings for students with exotic interests are understandable, but some college administrators think themselves delinquent if they do not offer a course in jujitsu. ”

What can be done:

“Mr. Hutchins, when he became president of the University of Chicago, declared that there would be no college-football team. A more modest step — and more palatable to the alumni — might be the one suggested by the conservative candidate for the Dartmouth board of trustees: Cut the size of the college administration and devote the resources to teaching.”

Source: National Review Online, May 5, 2007

Higher Ed: “I am a pro-choice libertarian Democrat whose platform remains the same, above all regarding educational reform. I denounce the outrageous expense, ideological indoctrination and spiritual hollowness of American higher education, with its crazed admissions rat race and juvenile brand-name snobbery. And I call for a valorization of the trades and for national investment in vocational schools to help salvage the disaster zone of urban public education. ”

Iraq: ” Support of the troops means not subjecting them to an unsustainable and ultimately unwinnable mission, cooked up by armchair cowboys who see the world in simplistic cartoon terms (”good guys” vs. “bad guys”). The provincial philistines of the Bush administration blundered into the Mideast with little more than superficial knowledge of its tangled history and ancient culture. And they have colossally wasted American blood and treasure on a project that had only a tangential relation to the atrocity of 9/11. ”

Source: Salon.com

The latest pricing report from the College Board (Average College Tuition and Fees for 2005-06 versus 2004-05) shows 

• four-year private nonprofit institutions tuition and fees average $1,190 more than last year ($21,235 versus $20,045, a 5.9 percent increase). Total charges average $29,026 ($1,561 more than last year’s $27,465, a 5.7 percent increase).
• four-year public institutions tuition and fees average $365 more than last year ($5,491 versus $5,126, a 7.1 percent increase). Total charges average $12,127 ($751 more than last year’s $11,376, a 6.6 percent increase).
• two-year public institutions tuition and fees average $112; more than last year ($2,191 versus $2,079, a 5.4 percent increase).