Mises Institute adjunct scholar Richard Vedder was interviewed this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition about his new book, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much. Listen here. Sounds like a great book. From the interview:
[College costs increase] because growing government financial aid, especially student loans, has made students relatively insensitive to the price of college. The universities can raise their tuitions a lot because the kids can get the money to pay for charges. [Also] universities have relatively few incentives to cut costs, but actually have quite a few incentives to increase spending and costs compared with what, say, the case would be in the private sector. .
..The U.S. News and World report rankings of universities tend to give emphasis to what universities spend rather than to what universities turn out in terms of the output of the students and what they’re learning, so there are ... growing tendencies for universities to try to have ever more luxurious facilities to attract students. It is an attraction and students obviously want to go to school in style, but one might ask, from a public policy point of view, whether the government ought to be assisting in paying for these things.
