Bruce Kesler asks the following:

Which field has higher cost inflation: colleges or medicine?

It might surprise many, especially subject to the barrages of schemes to nationalize medicine, that the cost of a college education has increased more than medical care.

This leads to him what I suppose is supposed to be some crescendo to the column:

Are, usually liberal, professors more willing for government to dictate others’ profession than their own?

I hate to tell Kessler, but professor have essentially zero to do with the rising cost of higher education. We are given no say in such matters, nor is our opinion likely solicited by administration or the board of trustees. And for state schools, the legislature never calls up to find out what we think before they set a given year’s budget allocation, the size of which may influence what the administration/board of trustees does in regards to tuition in a given academic year.

If the question that he is asking is why aren’t professors engaged in more of an outcry on this subject I would note that, a) there really aren’t that many of us, and b) we are not as unified a political block as so many seem to think that we are. Indeed, I hate to tell folks, but while there is plenty that is ideologically driven on college campuses, it isn’t one giant politics-fest at our colleges and universities.

To Kessler’s credit, he does note that professorial compensation isn’t at the heart of the matter. And trust me, there is never a one-to-one correlation between tuition increases and faculty salaries. The blame is placed here:

Richard Vedder’s 2024 book, Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much (AEI) says it’s because U.S. colleges are poorly productive, inefficient, and likely to use tuition money and state and federal grants to subsidize noninstructional activities, including athletics. One might add the huge fees paid to celebrity speakers who add little or nothing to education.

Large institutions, even private sector (non-educational) ones, are often inefficient, so no surprise there (although that is a pretty broad brush stroke). I hate to tell them, however, that most schools don’t spend tons of money on “celebrity speakers” and those who do can normally afford to do so. And the degree to which speakers have “little or nothing” to do with education is simply wrong.

The argument forgets that things like building and other infrastructural needs (maintaining old ones or building new ones) is quite financial drain.

Regardless, this piece ends up being one giant non sequitur, as it is wholly unclear what argument he is really trying to make. Indeed, it would seem that he thought up the title first, and then tried to write something to fit it.

A final factoid to further screw up the comparison: increases in tuition do not necessary correlate to increased cost in the aggregate, as a substantial number of students receive scholarships or other tuition reductions (the numbers are in the 40%-50% range, I believe). Indeed, such facts help lead to the tuition increases that Kessler decries.