Kenyon College - CASE

While critics
rage over college
prices, experts
examine why
costs have risen,
what families get
for their money,
and whether the
current system
can survive
By Mark Ellis
tuition was “relatively modest” when David H. Feldman
arrived at Kenyon, and when he left with the Class of 1978
he was debt-free.
His parents were public schoolteachers and savers. The
cost to them in 1974 was $4,438, and young David took
not a penny of financial aid. Feldman, now a professor of
economics at the College of William and Mary, specializes
in the economics of higher education, and he feels the tidal pull of
controversy.
Critics, pundits, and scholars have stormed higher education,
targeted accelerating tuition, and lampooned comfy residence halls
and trendy recreation facilities. Professors have been nicked for
light classroom workloads and doing research of dubious value to
undergraduates.
Even the core value of higher education has come under attack.
Money Magazine wondered, “Is college still worth the price?” New York
magazine noted the fashionable idea that a college degree is “essentially
worthless.” The co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, established the
Thiel Fellowship—a $100,000 grant for entrepreneurial grooming on
the condition that those who receive it steer clear of college for two
years. A number of books have piled on, including Higher Education?,
which described the Kenyon Athletic Center (KAC) as “a Taj Mahal.”
A 2011 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of
Americans believed higher education did not provide good value for
the money, and 75 percent said college was too expensive. In that same
survey, 38 percent of 1,055 college presidents said higher education was
“headed in the wrong direction.”
Just follow the money.
The Higher Cost of