Tapping Technology to Keep Lid on Tuition

David Wessel:

U.S. colleges and universities have been able to keep raising tuition because so many people, from the U.S. and overseas, will pay to get an American degree. The average tab for tuition, room and board at a four-year public school--even after accounting for financial aid--has risen an inflation-adjusted 42% in the past decade, a period in which inflation-adjusted incomes of families in the middle of the middle class fell.

This is unsustainable. It can go on a while longer, not for another decade.

Higher education, meanwhile, has been changed less by information technology than, for example, music, movies, newspapers, books, finance, telephones, air travel, retailing and even health care.

Which raises a big question: Can technology restrain the cost of higher education without diminishing what students learn?

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 22, 2012 1:03 AM
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