CPI is useful as a baseline for understanding higher education pricing, but check out the Commonfund's HEPI modeling of inflation specific to the higher educati

CPI is useful as a baseline for understanding higher education pricing, but check out the Commonfund's HEPI modeling of inflation specific to the higher education market, which this posting compelled me to add: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2451737 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2451737, http://www.commonfund.org/CommonfundInstitute/HEPI/HEPI%20Documents/2010/CF_HEPI_2010.pdf http://www.commonfund.org/CommonfundInstitute/HEPI/HEPI%20Do... Inflation was lower in '10 than it's been in decades, 0.9%, after several years of 2-3% inflation, generally around 1% higher than CPI every single year. Recently, the inflation was driven by volatile, high energy prices, since research labs especially are growing increasingly electricity-intensive as high-powered computing becomes a key part of more and more research fields.