Charging U

The high cost of college prevents many from attending or causes others to go into debt at an early age and delay life plans.  

Why does college cost so much?  

Because there is no objective measure of quality, prestige is determined by how much money a college has and spends.  

Individual pricing by private colleges allows them to charge each student the most that student and family are willing to pay, no...

The priorities of boards of trustees, administrators , and faculty are often different from those of the students.  Those students are paying into a system which directs funds into activities that do not align with their interests. They do not have the ability to opt out of services they do not wish to receive and those looking to enter or remain in the middle class do not have the option to forgo getting a college degree.

Climbing walls and lazy river pools are conspicuous and attract much attention but add relatively little to the cost of attendance.  On the other hand, colleges have been raising the prices they charge for housing at a rate much higher than inflation.  The building boom on campuses  has expanded space greater than the increase in student enrollment and has been very expensive. 

Theme music credit:  Sunshine by lemonmusicst...

Federal regulations and reporting requirements of colleges have grown in recent years forcing them to hire non-instructional staff to comply.  But this only accounts for a small part of the amount spent on administration.

Colleges have expanded their scope beyond the core missions of education and research. They are now more involved in the oversight of student life and health. They are providing more social support of stu...

Institutional support of sponsored research has grown at twice the rate of inflation for over 60 years and is an overlooked cause of high tuition.  The annual expense of unsponsored research is many thousands of dollars per student and may be an even larger contributor to rising costs.

This National Science Foundation website https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site  can be used to look up information regarding funding sour...

All intercollegiate athletic programs lose money, except for a few at universities with successful football programs  Students are charged up to several thousand dollars per year to make up the deficit.  Compliance with Title IX also adds to the cost.

Websites mentioned in this episode:

Office of Postsecondary Education website under Equity In Athletics: 
https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/search
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Once upon a time, Americans had access to affordable higher education and could pay for it by working while in college.  This promoted social mobility.  Over the last few decades, costs have risen dramatically causing current students to drown in student debt, alter life decisions, or forgo college altogether.

In this episode, we introduce the problem of the skyrocketing cost of attending college.  We cover:

• How previou...

In this episode, we discuss:

• Individual pricing, the most important factor contributing to the rise of tuition sticker price at private colleges and universities.  
• The effect of economic surplus, market segmentation, and enrollment management in setting a price to extract the maximum amount of current and future wealth from a student and family.
• How the relative increase in wealth of the top 5-10% both here and abroad and the des...

In this episode, we examine public colleges and universities and discuss:

• The high variability in higher education funding between states.
• How state appropriations dropped during the decade of the 2000s causing public colleges to make up for the shortfall by raising tuition.
• How the decrease in state appropriations explains only a part of the reason tuition was increased.

Theme music credit:  Sunshine by lemonmusicstudio ...