Charging U

Send a text The underlying cause of the high cost of college is an inability to objectively demonstrate quality or the value added by a college.  Currently, college rankings are determined by the amount of money they have and spend.  Those with more prestige are able to charge higher tuition.   Higher education institutions need to be incentivized to adopt a system which measures the knowledge and...

Send a text 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 ar...

Send a text Purdue University has frozen tuition for the last 13 years while improving its reputation.  This has saved students $6,000 per year, reduced the amount of debt, and improved graduation rates.  How did it do it and why don’t other universities do the same? Theme music: Sunshine by lemonmusicstudio via Pixabay

Send a text 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 opt...

Send a text Wealth inequality among universities enables the rich to get richer.  The design of college endowments limits the extent to which they can be used to reduce tuition for everyone. Theme music credit: Sunshine by lemonmusicstudio via Pixabay

Send a text 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 m...

Send a text 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 ar...

Send a text 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 loo...

Send a text Service fields such as higher education do not experience large improvements in efficiency so the cost of providing that service rises.   The salaries of professors may contribute a minor amount to the rising cost of college; however, reduced teaching loads and other perks are more important factors which cause the price of tuition to go up.

Send a text 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/#...

Send a text Influential rankings are based on the wealth of an institution, not how much students learn. This incentivizes colleges to maximize income in order to remain competitive. Theme music credit:  Sunshine by lemonstudiomusic via Pixabay

Send a text Government grants, easy access to subsidized loans, and tax breaks have made more money available to students, but somehow, students are even more overwhelmed with the burden of paying for college. Theme music credit: Sunshine by lemonmusicstudio via Pixabay

Send a text 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 attend...

Send a text 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...

Send a text 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 c...