Description: A critical examination of the complex system of college pricing--how it works, how it fails, and how fixing it can help both students and universities.
How much does it cost to attend college in the United States today? The answer is more complex than many realize. College websites advertise a sticker price, but uncovering the actual price--the one after incorporating financial aid--can be difficult for students and families. This inherent uncertainty leads some students to forgo applying to colleges that would be the best fit for them, or even not attend college at all. The result is that millions of promising young people may lose out on one of society's greatest opportunities for social mobility. Colleges suffer too, losing prospective students and seeing lower enrollments and less socioeconomic diversity. If markets require prices to function well, then the American higher-education system--rife as it is with ambiguity in its pricing--amounts to a market failure. In A Problem of Fit, economist Phillip B. Levine explains why institutions charge the prices they do and discusses the role of financial aid systems in facilitating--and discouraging--access to college. Affordability issues are real, but price transparency is also part of the problem. As Levine makes clear, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. In a clear-eyed assessment of educational access and aid in a post-COVID-19 economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.Brief description:
Phillip B. Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College. He is author of A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students--and Universities. He has contributed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Time, and Slate, and has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, ABC News Nightline, and NPR's All Things Considered.
Review Quotes: "Providing detailed economic analysis of the effects of sticker price, tuition discounts, merit and need-based financial aid, and institutional competition, Levine contends that the overall impact from these multiple factors is to limit access to higher education for lower-income students. He takes specific aim at the problem of opaque financial aid and how it serves to heighten inequities in higher education. And he offers an excellent discussion of the pros and cons of two major policies for improving access to college--the various versions of 'free college' and a significant increase (read: doubling) of Pell Grants."-- "Forbes"