Internal Threat I

Hyperventilated talk about the end of the American university often presumes that soaring list-price tuition means that college cost is out of control. This chapter lays out the history of list-price tuition, net price to students, and revenue to schools. It reviews the broad economic forces that lead college cost to rise faster than the inflation rate. It then contrasts those forces with claims that cost is driven by increasing dysfunction and inefficiency in higher education. These claims that figure so prominently in today’s narrative of sky-high tuition include administrative bloat and amenity competition.