Froma Harrop, a columnist with the Providence Journal, has an interesting op-ed in papers across the country today.

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The title is "Why Corvettes Cost Less Than College" and it’s about, as Harrop describes on her website, "the bubble economy of higher ed."

Some selected passages:

"American colleges continue to float in the bubble of economic exceptionalism once occupied by Detroit carmakers. American median income has grown 6.5 times over the past 40 years, but the cost of attending one’s own state college has ballooned 15 times. This kind of income-price mismatch haunted the housing market right before it melted down."

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In fact, college tuition has gotten so expensive, the father of a Kenyon College student told Harrop, "It’s like driving a new Corvette to Ohio every September, leaving the keys and taking the bus home."

Today, US universities take in $40 billion a year more than they did 30 years ago. And according to Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus in their book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and What We Can Do About It, Harrop points out, that money is not being used to educate our kids.

• Duke University spends over $20,000 a year per varsity golf player.
• There are 629 college football teams, 14 of which make money.

Read the rest of the article

September 24, 2010

The Best of Justin Rohrlich

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