<p>I think universities are incentivized in the wrong way. They lure top researchers, make them professors who don’t teach, then tell them to be “rain makers” who bring in the grant money. So a lot of the budget of the U goes to professors who don’t do the thing we pay tuition for – teach. Yes, it’s a good thing for important research to be ongoing at the schools our kids attend but the fundamental reason we pay to send them takes place in the lecture hall.</p>
<p>Then there’s a great deal of extra administrative layers nowadays. I can’t lay hands on it easily but that has increased something like 10 fold in 20 years.</p>
<p>So what we pay a lot for is research and administration vs actual teaching.</p>
<p>And, of course, there’s the whole issue of subsidizing anything makes the cost of it go up. If we grant FA to one kid the full pay kid will end up paying more and more. The government backed loans also enable price hikes. The truth is that putting more government control and money toward education will probably inflate tuition more than bring it down.</p>