Federal Financial Aid Is The Real Reason College Costs Too Much

By Richard Vedder. There are three standard explanations as to why college costs too much. First, there is the so-called Baumol Effect, named after a Princeton professor, William Baumol, that argues that teaching is like theater: professors are actors performing before students. Just as it takes as many actors now to perform King Lear as it did 400 years ago when it was written, there has been no productivity advance in higher education. More...