Book Summary
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Policies focused on controlling price are likely to damage the quality of our colleges and universities. They are also full of possibilities for surprising, and surprisingly harmful, “unintended consequences.
Why Does College Cost So Much?
Much of what has been written about colleges and universities has linked rapidly rising tuition to academic dysfunction. Universities' prestige games, gold-plated luxuries, and bloated bureaucracy are all common targets of dysfunction. This book takes a different approach. The writers put the higher education business squarely within the greater economic history of the United States to explain growing college costs. It's no surprise that the trend of college costs resembles that of many other sectors. Higher education is a personalized service that relies on well-educated employees. In the last thirty years, a technical trinity of broad economic factors has come together to drive higher education expenses, as well as costs in many other industries, to climb far faster than inflation. Economic development is the primary culprit.
This conclusion does not imply that all is well in higher education in the United States. At the same time that the market need for highly educated people has risen, a college degree has become less accessible to a large swath of the American populace. This issue of affordability has profound origins. The authors look at how cost pressures, the changing pay structure of the US economy, and the complexities of financial aid policies all work together to keep access to higher education below what we need in the twenty-first century job market.
This book is a plea to stop blaming and start looking for solutions that would enhance access to higher education while still maintaining the quality of our colleges and institutions.
Policies focused on controlling price are likely to damage the quality of our colleges and universities. They are also full of possibilities for surprising, and surprisingly harmful, “unintended consequences.
