Why Is College So Expensive?
In the last two issues of Global Macro Update, Ed d’Agostino has been exploring the question of why the cost of higher education has outpaced the rate of inflation — by a lot (see Why Is College So Expensive?and Is College Worth it?). Both Ed and his colleague, John Mauldin, have been aware of my work since the publication of End Times, and both have used structural-demographic theory (SDT) to understand how the world around us is changing. Ed, in particular, refers to elite overproduction as an important factor driving up the cost of the college degree, as well as simultaneously diminishing its worth.
In today’s post I add to this discussion by analyzing two hundred years of data on the cost of annual tuition at the Yale College. It is fortunate that we have these data, because Yale is one of the premier universities in the United States; perhaps, even the most consequential one (although Harvard beats Yale in having produced a greater number of political elites, such as presidents and senators, Yale outperforms Harvard on elite production per graduate). Of particular interest, from the point of view of SDT, is Yale Law School, which (according to my informal calculations) has produced a remarkable number of counter-elites (including Stewart Rhodes).
