This is the same guy who was criticized by Greenwald for arguing bank bailouts were a good idea. (http://www.salon.com/2008/10/31/pearlstein_3/ http://www.salon

This is the same guy who was criticized by Greenwald for arguing bank bailouts were a good idea. (http://www.salon.com/2008/10/31/pearlstein_3/ http://www.salon.com/2008/10/31/pearlstein_3/) I am a professor. This man's ideas are totally naive. Universities and colleges are engaged in a cold war to avoid gaps in endowments, buildings and other metrics of prestige. Their students are willing to pay more for this prestige and so the cost goes up. It's simple as that. If universities that decided not to heavily invest in themselves were effective at generating that prestige, the cost wouldn't be going up. Only a fraction of the people at the university are there because it is a place of learning, and almost all the people are engaged in research. Many of this guy's ideas are worse than bad, they are poisonous.