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Jens 'n' Frens |
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Peter Wood explains why college is so expensive:Title IV funds and other federal financial aid are seen by colleges and universities as money that is there for the taking. Tuition is set high enough to capture those funds and whatever else we think can be extracted from parents. Perhaps there are college administrators who don't see federal student aid in quite this way, but I haven't met them. But I don't mean to imply that college administrators are driven solely by profit maximization. One reason that many prefer sky-high tuitions is that it enables them to act as social engineers. The larger the income from tuition, the more money they have on hand for scholarships for students who cannot afford the tuition.This, surely, had occurred to most of the people who will be reading this, but perhaps we weren't sufficiently cynical to come up withBut maybe we have just decided that high prices for a college education are a good way to organize our society. Those prices are high enough to discourage large families and to provide a strong incentive for both parents to work. They also force a lot of people to work more years before retirement, and they amount to an early form of inheritance for children. Anything parents spend today on college bills will be subtracted tomorrow (along with interest) from the last will and testament. Never mind the old inheritance tax; college tuition is its functional equivalent. |
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