Costs

American colleges and universities spend billions of dollars a year from state, federal, and private sources. The following articles identify ways to cut costs and ensure that public investment in higher education provides value to students, taxpayers, and society.




Vocational Education Goes to College

When the University of Georgia announced that “student success” would be heavily weighted in future tenure decisions, it opened the door to the possibility of a long-overdue change in college…



Let the Buyer Beware!

“Almost all students cite getting a better job as a primary reason for attending college,” writes Preston Cooper in the opening paragraph of his new study, entitled Is College Worth…


Explaining the High Cost of College

The most striking fact about American colleges and universities over the last fifty years is how rapidly the cost of attending has risen. A good perspective on the college cost…



How Did We Get Into the Debt Trap?

No one spoke of college students being trapped in debt until rather recently. Prior to the advent of federal student aid programs, college wasn’t expensive, few Americans regarded it as…