I read where tuition and fees at private colleges are up 5.9% this year. well, first of all you know that number is no more reliable than the polls of KIm Jong-II’s popularity taken on North Korean streets — with the secret police standing by: about as meaningful as sticker prices on a lot full of Kias. I mean 75% of students get some kind of financial help. Gee, I wish I was an economist. Maybe then I could understand why amidst all the services and commodities that bless our world — college costs win the silver trophy every year. Up, up, up, and up they go. They’re in the same category as energy, local taxes, and my wife’s house allowance. (It’s benchmarked to the Winter price of swimsuits. Seems fair.)
But wait, I may not be an economist, but I have one on my family staff, so to speak — a son — and did I not partially pay for his undergraduate degree? Should he not be at the disposal of my curiosity? So why, I ask, do higher education costs duplicate the screaming climb of my July 4th fireworks? Housing is in decline, electronics too. Even gas at the corner station goes down occasionally — tuition costs NEVER do.
How could it be? The core rate hovers around 3.5 while the cost of what we call an education — a wildly undefinable concept — shoots the moon. And has for years. It’s the labor component, he explains to me. If only we could build a robot that could teach physics, history, even economics. A robot that would stride up and down the classroom proscenium and spout wisdom and never have to interrupt a lecture to use the men’s room. Flesh and blood professors would be remunerated like the kid who cuts your grass. Costs would crash — consumers would smile.
And then there’s the additional difficulty of starting up your own college — swelling the supply side. Not too easy.
Is college education a monopoly like the post office? Are there no choices? Hardly. You can forgo a degree — stay home and study like Erasmus for four years. And also note that community colleges spring up like weeds — a poor metaphor, but you know what I mean. That should reinforce the supply side, should it not? Evidently, there’s no penalty — no consumer resistance — to price rise.
Nobody says: Too much — I refuse to go. I’ll go the alternate route. The punishment by society, the professional/occupational world, is too severe. No degree? Go rent a lawn mower and knock on doors. That’s the problem. Along with the difficulty of you amassing the capital and credentials necessary to institute an “educational business” that grants a recognized degree and societies demand for that degree.
You can’t be an engineer, doctor, accountant, policeman, nurse or a hundred other well-paying pastimes without that ticket. Therefore, in the conventional cautious uncreative frame of mind of the ultimate employer, maybe here lies the heart of the problem. What if you could be an engineer without that costly degree?
Still, I’d love to magically double the number of institutions of higher learning and watch the price curve. I’ll ask my son, the economist.
