While listening to NPR, a guest came right out and said what I’ve long suspected as a fact. The huge increases in college tuition while inflation is flat is a deliberate strategy unrelated to inflation. This is the tool that universities are now using as active discrimination to create “diversity”.
You raise the tuition to huge heights, then offer a huge “discount” to those “special” students you want to “diversify” with – foreign students, illegal aliens, women, Gay & Lesbian activists, etc… and force the people you don’t want (white males from middle and upper class families) to pay the full fake list price – forcing them to either go into huge debt or look to a different school that isn’t playing the diversity racket.
The availability of federal grants and government backed student loans is also a factor. All providing “free” government money to education does is drives up the cost and feed the parasitic bloat which will result.
This was part of a story about the shutdown today of the state government in Minnesota, and the pain being endured by all the state workers having to spend their time filing their unemployment claims.
A related development (which I saw after writing this)
http://www.detnews.com/article/20110701/SCHOOLS/107010416/1409/METRO/Court-strikes-down-Michigan-ban-on-race-in-college-admissions
A Michigan court has ruled that the State cannot follow the law that requires the university system to ignore race as a criteria for college admission. The State is appealing the decision. But that’s the phony part of the scam – “Ok, mr white guy who speaks English – You’re admitted, but you can’t afford to come here – no aid for you!”
Here is an article that shows you hit the nail on the head again Art!
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/should-pell-grants-be-better-targeted/29809?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
(A University of Wisconsin study shows that the “neediest” Pell grant recipients should receive more aid).
Snip: “The researchers found that on average, the students who received the supplemental grants were no more likely to persist in college than those not receiving extra financial support. Moreover, they found that more advantaged Pell students (those with higher ACT scores and parents with college educations) appeared to be less likely to persist when they received the private grant, perhaps because they had more money with which to socialize. (Win one for the conservatives.)”
— “Some are more equal than others…” (Animal Farm by George Orwell)