A01=Phillip B. Levine
affordability
american society
Author_Phillip B. Levine
barriers
Category=JBFQ
Category=JBSA
Category=JNKG
Category=JNM
college
college-financing systems
costs
economics
educational access
enrollments
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
finances
financial aid
higher education
inequality
inequities
price transparency
pricing
social policy
socioeconomic diversity
students
tuition
united states of america
university
usa
worth
Product details
- ISBN 9780226818559
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 Apr 2022
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 because losing these prospective students can mean lower enrollment 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 economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.
Phillip B. Levine is the A. Barton Hepburn and Katharine Coman Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of five books devoted to statistics and the analysis of social policy and its effect on individual behavior.
