Salon has published an article by Thomas Frank recounting just about every justification that administrations have used to explain the escalation of college costs. He states that tuition has increased 1200% since the 1980’s:
“Tuition has increased at a rate double that of medical care, usually considered the most expensive of human necessities. It has outstripped any reasonable expectation people might have had for investments over the period.”
He questions the fingers that point to the cost of regulations, teachers and student needs.
“Nobody knows why tuition increases lagged behind consumer prices in the 1970s and jumped ahead in the 1980s,” according to an Associated Press summary. But in retrospect I think the answer is obvious. It happened then because these things are all related: deregulation, tax cuts, de-unionization and outrageous tuition inflation are all part of the same historical turn.”
It’s an article well worth reading.
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