Michael Smith wrote: > Doug's paper noted the decreased government support for colleges. Yet > at the same time -- if I'm doing the numbers right -- > constant-dollar expenditures per student appear to have climbed steadily > since around 1980, both in public and private universities, with the > slack of course being taken up by the students and their families:
Could this be the result of Baumol's "cost disease of the service sector" where rising wages in the goods-producing sector (in which labor productivity rises) bleed over into the service sector (where productivity growth is flat, since it's so hard to raise productivity there), so that unit labor costs in the latter rise relative to those in the former? Of course, these days, wages don't seem to be rising that much in the goods-producing sector. I'd blame all the overhead costs (administrators, insurance, lawyers, etc.) for education inflation. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
