Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-282) and index.

The landscape of the college cost debate -- Is higher education all that unusual? -- Higher education is a service -- The costs of employing highly educated workers -- Cost and quality in higher education -- The bottom line : why does college cost so much? -- Is higher education increasingly dysfunctional? -- Productivity growth in higher education -- Subsidies and tuition setting -- List-price tuition and institutional grants -- Outside financial aid -- The college affordability crisis -- Federal policy and college tuition -- Financial aid policy -- Rewriting the relationship between states and their public universities -- A few final observations.

For much of the past century college tuition has risen more rapidly than the inflation rate. Unlike many analyses of higher education, Archibald and Feldman show how broad economic factors have combined to push up cost. These forces are largely out of the control of colleges and universities.