Charging U

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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.

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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.


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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 via Pixabay.

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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 desire for prestige has led to an increased demand for the static number of seats at selective colleges allowing them to increase the tuition they charge.

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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 previous generations of Americans had access to an affordable college          education which enabled social mobility.
• The economic and societal impact of the meteoric rise of college tuition which causes students and families to borrow more, alter life decisions, or forgo college altogether.
• How the present debate centers on how to get more money to give to colleges without looking at how the money is spent.

Special thanks to Joyce Lieberman for technical advice.
Theme music credit:  Sunshine by lemonstudiomusic via Pixabay.