Over the last couple of Monday’s I’ve started to address what my Degree of Freedom project might mean for students and parents trying to figure out what’s next for them as they think about applying, selecting and shelling out thousands for college. Questions regarding whether I worked as hard or learned as much during my […]
Series Archives: Cost of College
So What Actually is a “Degree”?
Returning to that continued Monday discussion of what new free learning tools might mean to students and parents staring down six-figure tuition bills (which allegedly buy a ticket to a better life), I read a story last week that clarifies why conversations containing the words “degree,” “diploma” and “college” seem to be so murky. The […]
What’s the Most College Should Cost?
In last week’s newsletter, I discussed some of the $10,000 BA programs that emerged after Texas Governor Rick Perry challenged the state’s college systems to come up with options that would allow students to graduate with a degree at that price point. As I noted then, this $10,000 degree concept is not about taking an […]
The Cost of College – Intangibles
A couple of weeks back, I calculated that if the price of college had risen as fast as housing (another market that has significantly outpaced inflation over the last 40-50 years), the cost for a year at even the best school should be no more than $15,000. I also used Harvard Extension’s degree program to […]
Does College Cost Negative $500,000?
Whenever you take on the issue of the escalating cost of college, a frequent response is that the price of higher education is well worth it when you take into account the increased lifetime earning power college grads have over those who only make it through high school. A well-articulated version of this argument appeared […]
Itemizing the Cost of College
In case you’re wondering what my Monday musings on the cost of college have to do with MOOCs and free learning, while I realized quite early that pre-backlash fantasies of MOOCs replacing traditional residential college programs were not realistic, this does not eliminate the possibility that new free learning tools might one day provide an […]
Why is the Cost of College What it Is?
Over the last few months, Monday postings have been dedicated to the cost of college, one of the driving forces behind the initial enthusiasm for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as a potential replacement for a residential college experience that continues to be the choice for most students, despite a price tag spiraling beyond the […]
Tuition Discounting – Does Anyone Pay Sticker Price?
A review of the book Why Does College Cost So Much? talked about one factor for the rapid rise of college tuition (cost disease). But today, I’d like to look at another factor the author’s take on: the practice of tuition discounting. College costs are already subsidized for most students in one way or another. […]
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis and the Cost of College
Over the last two weeks, I talked about two competing theories regarding why the cost of college has risen faster than any other product or service. One theory, summed up in William Bennett’s Is College Worth It?, lays blame for this hyper-inflation on schools themselves which have taken advantage of huge pots of available money […]
Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis and the Cost of College – Continued
Last week, I began an attempt to reconcile two competing theories over why college costs as much as it does. One theory (the “Bennett Hypothesis”) holds that schools are responsible for the ever-inflating cost of tuition due to their readiness to suck up funds from any source (families, government grants, banks loans, etc.) through ever-escalating […]
