RE: What an irrelevant question. The two have nothing to do with each other.
The author of this article is arguing that the basic economic principles behind the fall in cell phone prices and the increase in its quality vs the increase in college tuition and the decrease in quality, APPLY.
Can you imagine the CEO’s of cell phone makers for instance, spending more money on administrators than designers, software developers and marketing? Yet, that’s what many of our schools do. WHY? Because they can count on TAXPAYER MONEY to come in.
The author concludes thusly:
The only fix for the out-of-control cost spiral in the education sector is to eliminate this illegal, redistributionary infusion of government-directed taxpayer funding. So long as those college administrators can count on billions of forcibly extracted dollars to flow from the taxpayers, prices will continue to rise at ten times the rate of inflation, or worse. (Health care costs have risen at six times inflation during the same period. I wonder why! Trend, anyone?)
Only when colleges have to compete directly for the pocketbooks of the parents and/or the students will costs plummet. Quality of service will also increase, and test scores will rise. But when that happens, politicians will lose one of their favorite vote-buying schemes. Administrators will have to rethink the décor of their offices, as well as the terms of tenure, pensions, and other perks not necessarily found in the private sector.
Cost of cell phones is not going down. They are just changing the paradigm. I used to pay $100 a year and now I pay $35 a month, $70 for a data plan.
Tuition is going up because people are willing to pay it.