NAICU - The Value Gap

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The Value Gap

Chronicle of Higher Education - Commentary

January 11, 2012

Beyond demographics, what has really helped sustain the anything-goes pricing model in higher ed is the so-called wage premium. The reason so many students want to go to college, and the reason so many families are willing to pay anything for it, is the lifetime payoff of a degree. So going to college is worth it, but going to any college at any price may no longer be worth it. About half of Americans think that the higher-education system is doing a poor or fair job in providing value for the money spent, according to a Pew Research Center survey. College presidents seem tone-deaf to those concerns.

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