America’s colleges and universities are the best in the world. They are also the most expensive. Tuition has risen faster than the rate of inflation for the past thirty years. There is no indication that this trend will abate. Ronald G. Ehrenberg explores the causes of this tuition inflation, drawing on his many years as a teacher and researcher of the economics of higher education and as a senior administrator at Cornell University. Using incidents and examples from his own experience, he discusses a wide range of topics including endowment policies, admissions and financial aid policies, the funding of research, tenure and the end of mandatory retirement, information technology, libraries and distance learning, student housing, and intercollegiate athletics. He shows that colleges and universities, having multiple, relatively independent constituencies, suffer from ineffective central control of their costs. And in a fascinating analysis of their response to the ratings published by magazines such as U.S. News & World Report, he shows how they engage in a dysfunctional competition for students. In the short run, colleges and universities have little need to worry about rising tuitions, since the number of qualified students applying for entrance is rising even faster. But in the long run, it is not at all clear that the increases can be sustained. Ehrenberg concludes by proposing a set of policies to slow the institutions’ rising tuitions without damaging their quality.

College tuition has risen more rapidly than the overall inflation rate for much of the past century. To explain rising college cost, the authors place the higher education industry firmly within the larger economic history of the United States.

Providing a clear, logical guide to an illogical topic, this book provides an easy-to-understand guide for anyone who wants to successfully navigate the labyrinth of going to college—and paying for the experience. 100 years ago, college tuition at prestigious Ivy League colleges such as Harvard and Brown was about $130 per year. Even when adjusted for inflation, today's cost of higher education has increased dramatically—to the point where a college education is shifting further out of reach for many Americans. This book explains the essential concepts in the debate regarding the staggering costs of higher education, supplying ten original essays by higher education policy experts, a lively historical narrative that provides context to current issues, and systematic guides to finding additional sources of information on the subject. Written from a historian's point of view, The Rising Costs of Higher Education: A Reference Handbook explains the economics of higher education in a manner that encourages readers to participate in the discussion on how to control ever-increasing tuition costs. Both college-bound students and parents will come to appreciate how complicated the problem of paying for college is, and grasp the crucial differences between "cost" and "price" in the specific economics of colleges and universities.

The Rising Cost of Education covers the skyrocketing tuition fees for higher education, explaining just how expensive tuition is as well as what causes its increase and the risks it poses for Americans. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Essential Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.