It would be if you assumed the purpose of college was to impart information. It's not. All that stuff about "teaching students to think" is just bullshit, fra

It would be if you assumed the purpose of college was to impart information. It's not. All that stuff about "teaching students to think" is just bullshit, frankly. The real reason you have to go to college to get a good job is the school you went to gives employers an indication of how smart you are. Prior to Griggs v Duke Power employers could just give you an IQ test, and all the big ones did. If you wanted to work for IBM you could get a job even without a college degree if you did well on the IQ test. But with that single court ruling employers had to cast about for another way to rank applicants, and the most obvious solution was by college exclusivity. So if you went to Harvard they want you. Not because you were likely to learn anything at Harvard you couldn't learn at State U. It's because they know you have to be pretty smart to get into Harvard as only one in about twenty applicants is actually accepted. So Harvard (with the highest rejection ratio) can charge whatever it wants (and it's worth every penny), whereas schools that take everyone can't charge more than enough to keep the lights on. It's hard to establish a new school. Parents will want to know "Is it a good school?" Since this is one of the biggest decisions in Junior's life, they're going to go conservative and try to get him into established colleges with solid reputations. Your new college has a chicken and egg problem - you can't get a lot of applicants unless you reject a lot of applicants.