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Where has this broken down with higher education then? Costs are rising in lock step with the availability of loans. Monopolies are not the reason that prices
by TrevorJ 10y ago
Where has this broken down with higher education then? Costs are rising in lock step with the availability of loans.
Monopolies are not the reason that prices rise according to what the market will bear.
- dragonwriter 10y agoFor a number of reasons, higher ed supply is slow to react to increased demand (for any given student cohort; scaling out to serve different kinds of students with different demands is a slightly different story), which means you've got a low price elasticity of demand in ay least the short run. And, in fact, part of this is that largely higher education is monopolistic. Except at the very bottom tier, degrees from established institutions are not, in the market, as having equivalent substitutes when a new entrant comes into the market. The established reputation of institutions is a big part of what people are paying for.
- TrevorJ 10y agoThose factors have nearly always been the case though, and do not explain the massive price inflations that have occurred in lock step with loan availability. The increases have also not been confined to top tier universities so the monopoly argument doesn't explain them.