“In 1980 a gallon of gasoline cost $1.19. Today it’s $3.41, a 2.7% annual increase. But undergraduate tuition has risen nearly three times as fast: 6.7% a year at public colleges, for an increase of nearly 1,400%. The greatest assault on middle-class America’s prosperity may be the relentless, four-decade-long inflation in higher education. “ So begins a recent post in Dr. Scott Galloway’s “No Mercy, No Malice” blog. After World War II, the GI Bill made a college education a reality for millions of returning vets and helped create the American Middle Class as we’ve come to know it.
Higher education in the form of a college degree has become the unchallenged (and mostly valid) assumption for success in the minds of most parents. However, the elite schools are charging more tuition, rejecting more students and forcing many to second and third tier schools where they are still over charged. His analysis of increasing inequity of access to the better schools should be required reading for every parent who attended college in a more egalitarian and affordable era and may find their kids asking them “You got yours, where’s mine?” Check out his blog post “Inflated.”
