Mark Oppenheimer in WSJ: “Higher education has to be considered one of America’s greatest market failures: absurdly expensive, with little price competition, tuitions increasing ahead of inflation and no good gauge to measure quality. After all, Cornell might be worth $30,000 a year, but is La Verne University, in La Verne, Calif., worth $22,800, not counting room and board?”
We don’t need to pick on poor La Verne University (which is far better than Shirley University), but Oppenheimer clearly has a point. And the fundamental problem, as Richard Vedder has shown, is one of supply and demand–demand has exploded because the government subsidizes so much higher ed. A better approach would be to give vouchers to students, along the lines of what Colorado is experimenting with.