A number of colleges and universities have announced steep
tuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,
very low rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because
of a loss in value of university endowments' heavily investing in common __1__
stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes
its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the __2__
outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of __3__
business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty __4__
increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of being
in the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in __5__
graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one' s job prospects, __6__
the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,
in order to make oneself more marketable.
The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students __7__
include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students
a governance role, and eliminate required courses. __8__
Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as
customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the __9__
rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the
athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best
athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlier
from professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities,
the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by
agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely
of need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best __10__
customer.
（责任编辑：liushengbao）
