Going Broke by Degree by Richard Vedder

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Going Broke by Degree by Richard Vedder

David Wood once said, “College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?” The costs of college are escalating at an all time high, which is why Richard Vedder went out and looked for a reason as to why this is and what, if any, solutions to this ongoing problem could be. Vedder talks about four main reasons why tuition continues to rise: third party providers and the amount of funding and spending that goes on, there is no market discipline when it comes to universities, price competition, and also government regulation. However, in order to combat these rising prices, Vedder came up with a number of solutions that could be used to control the cost of tuition, despite some problems with these ideas, his idea of using a voucher system is the best solution that he presents.

Vedder explains that universities in general believe that they can raise the price of tuition because due to the increasing amount of government aid to education, most notably student loans, the families haven’t been too concerned with the rising cost of education. He claims that there is a vicious circle in regards to university financing. In the first year, the tuition would be increased and to deal with the political pressure that comes with it, Congress makes student loans more accessible and affordable. As a result of this, the demand for education becomes greater and as such, the colleges are then able to raise prices again which would result in more political pressure and thus, more affordable loans. In order to deal with this growing problem, Vedder believes that the best way to do that would be to simply stop allowing these third parties to give more money when the tuition increases. By doing this, it would make the student more aware of the price of tuition, thus not as likely to enroll at a university with a relatively high cost of tuition.

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