Elite Colleges Don't Expect You To Pay

Peter Scheer: “The elite private colleges use gargantuan tuition to do what is usually thought to be the province of governments: redistribute wealth by 'taxing' the families of rich students in order to subsidize the less rich and the not rich. Like for-profit corporations, elite colleges engage in 'price discrimination,' applying different prices to different students in order to extract the most money that each student is willing and able to pay, explains Henry Hansmann, professor at Yale Law School and expert on charitable organizations. But unlike for-profit corporations, colleges engage in this quintessentially capitalist behavior in the service of an egalitarian ideal.”