Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free tuition at US public Universities?

Yes, exactly.


The easy availability of student loans has been one driver you didn't mention. They raise the price because they can.

When I started college in the mid 1980s, they told us that tuition "didn't begin to cover the costs of your education." This problem was supposed to justify annual increases that were much greater than increases in the cost of living. Thirty years later, they're still saying the same thing. I stopped believing them a long time ago.

As a little thought experiment about costs, a full load of classes is usually 4 per semester. At, say, Harvard, tuition is almost $39,000 this year, which means that a student is paying almost $4,900 per class.* This is a pretty standard price at many private colleges. I find it hard to believe that it really costs more than $240,000 to run introductory biology or chemistry for 50 students. And any class not requiring a lab is going to cost even less.

*Yes, many students get financial aid, but loans are a big part of financial aid, and they go straight into the university's coffers. But even if we knock half of the big number I quoted, I still doubt that a college or university is really spending that much on a single class.