Results by title
6 books match the query 'College costs'
A Problem of Fit
How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and UniversitiesPhillip B. Levine
University of Chicago Press, 2022
A critical examination of the complex system of college pricing—how it works, how it fails, and how fixing it can help both students and universities.
How much does it cost to attend college in the United States today? The answer is more complex than many realize. College websites advertise a sticker price, but uncovering the actual price—the one after incorporating financial aid—can be difficult for students and families. This inherent uncertainty leads some students to forgo applying to colleges that would be the best fit for them, or even not attend college at all. The result is that millions of promising young people may lose out on one of society’s greatest opportunities for social mobility. Colleges suffer too, losing prospective students and seeing lower enrollments and less socioeconomic diversity. If markets require prices to function well, then the American higher-education system—rife as it is with ambiguity in its pricing—amounts to a market failure.
In A Problem of Fit, economist Phillip B. Levine explains why institutions charge the prices they do and discusses the role of financial aid systems in facilitating—and discouraging—access to college. Affordability issues are real, but price transparency is also part of the problem. As Levine makes clear, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. In a clear-eyed assessment of educational access and aid in a post-COVID-19 economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.
How much does it cost to attend college in the United States today? The answer is more complex than many realize. College websites advertise a sticker price, but uncovering the actual price—the one after incorporating financial aid—can be difficult for students and families. This inherent uncertainty leads some students to forgo applying to colleges that would be the best fit for them, or even not attend college at all. The result is that millions of promising young people may lose out on one of society’s greatest opportunities for social mobility. Colleges suffer too, losing prospective students and seeing lower enrollments and less socioeconomic diversity. If markets require prices to function well, then the American higher-education system—rife as it is with ambiguity in its pricing—amounts to a market failure.
In A Problem of Fit, economist Phillip B. Levine explains why institutions charge the prices they do and discusses the role of financial aid systems in facilitating—and discouraging—access to college. Affordability issues are real, but price transparency is also part of the problem. As Levine makes clear, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. In a clear-eyed assessment of educational access and aid in a post-COVID-19 economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.
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Economic Challenges in Higher Education
Charles T. Clotfelter, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Malcolm Getz, and John J. Siegfried
University of Chicago Press, 1991
The last two decades have been a turbulent period for American higher education, with profound demographic shifts, gyrating salaries, and marked changes in the economy. While enrollments rose about 50% in that period, sharp increases in tuition and fees at colleges and universities provoke accusations of inefficiency, even outright institutional greed and irresponsibility. As the 1990s progress, surpluses in the academic labor supply may give way to shortages in many fields, but will there be enough new Ph.D.'s to go around?
Drawing on the authors' experience as economists and educators, this book offers an accessible analysis of three crucial economic issues: the growth and composition of undergraduate enrollments, the supply of faculty in the academic labor market, and the cost of operating colleges and universities. The study provides valuable insights for administrators and scholars of education.
Drawing on the authors' experience as economists and educators, this book offers an accessible analysis of three crucial economic issues: the growth and composition of undergraduate enrollments, the supply of faculty in the academic labor market, and the cost of operating colleges and universities. The study provides valuable insights for administrators and scholars of education.
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Hidden Tuition
An Insider's Guide to College Pricing and Financial AidPhillip B. Levine
University of Chicago Press, 2026
The secret economics of maximizing college financial aid (and why it’s not as miserable as you think).
In the college admissions process, a terrifying unknown looms large: How much is this really going to cost? For prospective students and their families, there’s no easy answer. While college prices continue to rise, so do their promises of financial aid for qualified students. But who qualifies? And for how much? How can this monumental life decision be so utterly impossible to understand?
Hidden Tuition is an insider’s guide for navigating college financial aid to maximum effect and with (relatively) minimal pain. Economist and financial-aid expert Phillip B. Levine draws on his unique experience—including years of research in higher-education finance and work alongside admissions and financial-aid departments—to help readers first identify, then minimize, what they’ll actually pay for different types of colleges based on their circumstances. With expertise, clarity, and the warmth of someone who’s been through it, Levine details how students can find the hidden tuition costs in the opaque landscape of college pricing and financial aid. He explores topics that include:
- Why college’s “sticker prices” are rarely what students pay—and how some actual prices are even going down
- The best, worst, and most surprising deals for students with different financial resources
- How to navigate financial aid for divorced and multi-residence households
- Who really benefits from early decision
- How the nature of scholarships and merit-based aid is often framed in misleading ways
- The pros and cons of college savings accounts
- When and how to get started on college financing
- Why all student loans aren't the same (or aren't all that bad)
Debunking common myths and offering practical guidance for both families and individual students, Hidden Tuition makes a maddeningly imperfect process more manageable—and gives students a clearer path through one of life’s biggest financial decisions towards collegiate success.
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Paying the Price
College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American DreamSara Goldrick-Rab
University of Chicago Press, 2016
If you are a young person, and you work hard enough, you can get a college degree and set yourself on the path to a good life, right?
Not necessarily, says Sara Goldrick-Rab, and with Paying the Price, she shows in damning detail exactly why. Quite simply, college is far too expensive for many people today, and the confusing mix of federal, state, institutional, and private financial aid leaves countless students without the resources they need to pay for it.
Drawing on an unprecedented study of 3,000 young adults who entered public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008 with the support of federal aid and Pell Grants, Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls. Half the students in the study left college without a degree, while less than 20 percent finished within five years. The cause of their problems, time and again, was lack of money. Unable to afford tuition, books, and living expenses, they worked too many hours at outside jobs, dropped classes, took time off to save money, and even went without adequate food or housing. In many heartbreaking cases, they simply left school—not with a degree, but with crippling debt. Goldrick-Rab combines that shocking data with devastating stories of six individual students, whose struggles make clear the horrifying human and financial costs of our convoluted financial aid policies.
America can fix this problem. In the final section of the book, Goldrick-Rab offers a range of possible solutions, from technical improvements to the financial aid application process, to a bold, public sector–focused “first degree free” program. What’s not an option, this powerful book shows, is doing nothing, and continuing to crush the college dreams of a generation of young people.
Not necessarily, says Sara Goldrick-Rab, and with Paying the Price, she shows in damning detail exactly why. Quite simply, college is far too expensive for many people today, and the confusing mix of federal, state, institutional, and private financial aid leaves countless students without the resources they need to pay for it.
Drawing on an unprecedented study of 3,000 young adults who entered public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008 with the support of federal aid and Pell Grants, Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls. Half the students in the study left college without a degree, while less than 20 percent finished within five years. The cause of their problems, time and again, was lack of money. Unable to afford tuition, books, and living expenses, they worked too many hours at outside jobs, dropped classes, took time off to save money, and even went without adequate food or housing. In many heartbreaking cases, they simply left school—not with a degree, but with crippling debt. Goldrick-Rab combines that shocking data with devastating stories of six individual students, whose struggles make clear the horrifying human and financial costs of our convoluted financial aid policies.
America can fix this problem. In the final section of the book, Goldrick-Rab offers a range of possible solutions, from technical improvements to the financial aid application process, to a bold, public sector–focused “first degree free” program. What’s not an option, this powerful book shows, is doing nothing, and continuing to crush the college dreams of a generation of young people.
[more]
Unequal Higher Education
Wealth, Status, and Student OpportunityBarrett J. Taylor
Rutgers University Press, 2019
American higher education is often understood as a vehicle for social advancement. However, the institutions at which students enroll differ widely from one another. Some enjoy tremendous endowment savings and/or collect resources via research, which then offsets the funds that students contribute. Other institutions rely heavily on student tuition payments. These schools may struggle to remain solvent, and their students often bear the lion’s share of educational costs. Unequal Higher Education identifies and explains the sources of stratification that differentiate colleges and universities in the United States. Barrett J. Taylor and Brendan Cantwell use quantitative analysis to map the contours of this system. They then explain the mechanisms that sustain it and illustrate the ways in which rising institutional inequality has limited individual opportunity, especially for students of color and low-income individuals.
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Who Should Pay?
Higher Education, Responsibility, and the PublicNatasha Quadlin
Russell Sage Foundation, 2022
Americans now obtain college degrees at a higher rate than at any time in recent decades in the hopes of improving their career prospects. At the same time, the rising costs of an undergraduate education have increased dramatically, forcing students and families to take out often unmanageable levels of student debt. The cumulative amount of student debt reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2017, and calls for student loan forgiveness have gained momentum. Yet public policy to address college affordability has been mixed. While some policymakers support more public funding to broaden educational access, others oppose this expansion. Noting that public opinion often shapes public policy, sociologists Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell examine public opinion on who should shoulder the increasing costs of higher education and why.
Who Should Pay? draws on a decade’s worth of public opinion surveys analyzing public attitudes about whether parents, students, or the government should be primarily responsible for funding higher education. Quadlin and Powell find that between 2010 and 2019, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of more government funding. In 2010, Americans overwhelming believed that parents and students were responsible for the costs of higher education. Less than a decade later, the percentage of Americans who believed that federal or state/local government should be the primary financial contributor has more than doubled. The authors contend that the rapidity of this change may be due to the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the growing awareness of the social and economic costs of high levels of student debt. Quadlin and Powell also find increased public endorsement of shared responsibility between individuals and the government in paying for higher education. The authors additionally examine attitudes on the accessibility of college for all, whether higher education at public universities should be free, and whether college is worth the costs.
Quadlin and Powell also explore why Americans hold these beliefs. They identify individualistic and collectivist world views that shape public perspectives on the questions of funding, accessibility, and worthiness of college. Those with more individualistic orientations believed parents and students should pay for college, and that if students want to attend college, then they should work hard and find ways to achieve their goals. Those with collectivist orientations believed in a model of shared responsibility – one in which the government takes a greater level of responsibility for funding education while acknowledging the social and economic barriers to obtaining a college degree for many students. The authors find that these belief systems differ among socio-demographic groups and that bias – sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate – regarding race and class affects responses from both individualistic and collectivist-oriented participants.
Public opinion is typically very slow to change. Yet Who Should Pay? provides an illuminating account of just how quickly public opinion has shifted regarding the responsibility of paying for a college education and its implications for future generations of students.
Who Should Pay? draws on a decade’s worth of public opinion surveys analyzing public attitudes about whether parents, students, or the government should be primarily responsible for funding higher education. Quadlin and Powell find that between 2010 and 2019, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of more government funding. In 2010, Americans overwhelming believed that parents and students were responsible for the costs of higher education. Less than a decade later, the percentage of Americans who believed that federal or state/local government should be the primary financial contributor has more than doubled. The authors contend that the rapidity of this change may be due to the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the growing awareness of the social and economic costs of high levels of student debt. Quadlin and Powell also find increased public endorsement of shared responsibility between individuals and the government in paying for higher education. The authors additionally examine attitudes on the accessibility of college for all, whether higher education at public universities should be free, and whether college is worth the costs.
Quadlin and Powell also explore why Americans hold these beliefs. They identify individualistic and collectivist world views that shape public perspectives on the questions of funding, accessibility, and worthiness of college. Those with more individualistic orientations believed parents and students should pay for college, and that if students want to attend college, then they should work hard and find ways to achieve their goals. Those with collectivist orientations believed in a model of shared responsibility – one in which the government takes a greater level of responsibility for funding education while acknowledging the social and economic barriers to obtaining a college degree for many students. The authors find that these belief systems differ among socio-demographic groups and that bias – sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate – regarding race and class affects responses from both individualistic and collectivist-oriented participants.
Public opinion is typically very slow to change. Yet Who Should Pay? provides an illuminating account of just how quickly public opinion has shifted regarding the responsibility of paying for a college education and its implications for future generations of students.
[more]