Quote from piezoe:
Your alma mater's tuition rate went up at almost exactly 7%/yr compounded annually. You didn't say what year period you were referring to but if we assume it is the most recent ten years then that's slightly above the average shadowstats, consumer inflation rate over that period. And quite a bit above the national average rate of increase for a year of private college including fees and room and board over the last 20 years, which the Times article quotes as 4%. I have been referring to just tuition while the figure in the times article refers to total average cost (tuition, fees, room and board, no books mentioned.) I think there is less wiggle room in just using the tuition figure alone, that's why I prefer to use that as a marker of college cost increases, and indeed the majority of the Gee Whiz articles in the media are referring to tuition.
It is conceivable that fees or room and board did not increase as fast as the inflation rate, though it seems unlikely, and that could account for a slightly lower overall rate of increase. In any case, when I looked at just tuition alone, using the government's survey data, I found that tuition on average at private colleges , and at public institutions too, has just kept up with actual inflation (shadowstats, not government), not only over the past 20 years, but pretty much over any period of ten years or more. Those are averages, and some schools went up a little more, and some a little less.
The hard fact that some of these knuckleheads can not wrap their brain around, is that the cost of college, on average, possibly excluding books, is the same today in constant dollars, based on actual consumer inflation, as it was twenty years ago! That certainly flies in the face of common wisdom. But it is so easy to lose track of inflation, and we've had plenty ever since the Nixon Shock.
Until I read the Leonhardt article, I had not realized that two-year colleges (community and junior) had actually decreased in total costs over the past twenty years relative to the government's inflation rate. That means that they actually went down by a remarkable amount in cost relative to the actual inflation rate. I hope they did not suffer a comparable decrease in quality. Remarkable nevertheless. I can think of very little that has decreased in constant dollar cost, other than electronics, over the past twenty years.
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"Common wisdom is almost always wrong!" -- Gore Vidal
