THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

Public higher education was once America's great enabler, permitting young people from lower-class backgrounds to attend college for very little money and to rise as far as their abilities and drives would take them.

That may no longer be the case, according to economists James Koch and Richard Cebula. In their 2020 book, Runaway College Costs: How College Governing Boards Fail to Protect Their Students, they claim that "[p]ublic higher has evolved into an engine that accentuates rather than reduces social and economic inequality." [...]

They consider higher education to be a "trust market," with the customers forced to trust that they are being sold a quality product at a reasonable price. Board members have a fiduciary duty to ascertain that they receive one. In that regard, they are failing, according to Koch and Cebula. They cite "Bowen's Rule," a mechanism defined by economist and former college president Howard Bowen, which partially explains why academia suffers constant cost increases:

The dominant goals of higher education instruction are excellence, prestige, and influence.

There is virtually no limit to the amount of money that an institution could spend for seemingly fruitful educational ends.

Each institution raises all the money it can.

Each institution spends all it raises.

The cumulative effect of the preceding four laws is toward ever-increasing expenditure.

Koch and Cebula place the responsibility for this trend squarely on the desks of those who are supposed to be looking out for society and the students--on the universities' governing boards.

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