What an irrelevant question. The two have nothing to do with each other.
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.
EDIT TO ADD... we can ask ourselves the same question when it comes to healthcare.
Why for instance is the price of LASIK SURGERY going down while the cost of healthcare going up?
The cost of LASIK has decreased ~70% since its inception, despite significant technological breakthroughs that make it more effective and less risky. Meanwhile general health care costs have increased at an annual rate double, or more than double, the rate of inflation for the last two decades.
HINT: LASIK depends on COMPETITION and is NOT SUBSIDIZED in healthcare plans. Neither are healthcare providers FORCED by government to pay for it.