Beth Akers, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow joins the On the Move panel to discuss a Manhattan Institute Study that breaks down the reasons why the cost of a college education has skyrocketed.
Video Transcript
JULIE HYMAN: I want to turn to the cost of college now, because to get a private four-year college education, we've seen the cost of that rise at 50% above inflation. A new paper looks to try to figure out why that is. That paper was authored by Beth Akers, Manhattan Institute senior fellow. She's joining us from Salt Lake City, along with our Aarthi Swaminathan, who covers education for us.
Beth, among other things, you sort of come at this from a different perspective, you say, than other papers. Other papers sort of look at the cost of education. Are you building new stuff on campus? Are you providing different services? You look at the demand side as well, because in other types of markets, you see more of an equilibrium, and therefore, more of a cap on costs.
BETH AKERS: Exactly. So I've been covering this issue for about a decade. And these conversations about why college is so expensive have often focused on this idea of shaming colleges for building luxuries like a lazy river on campus or a climbing wall. They could be paying their administrators too much, things like that.
To me, I'm looking at this like it's a market for any sort of service or product. Can you imagine if we were shaming Apple for making too good of a camera in their iPhones? It just doesn't quite make sense.
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