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A number of colleges and universities have announced steep tuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,very low rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because of a loss in value of university endowments' heavily investing in common __1__stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the __2__outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of __3__ business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty __4__ increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of being in the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in __5__ graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one' s job prospects, __6__ the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,in order to make oneself more marketable.The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students __7__ include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students a governance role, and eliminate required courses. __8__ Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the __9__ rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlier from professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities,the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely of need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best __10__ customer.
