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 […]