Tuition trouble: climbing college costs.

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - Brief article

A RECENT report from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that government subsidies raise the price of higher education.

In their February paper, economists Stephanie Riegg Cellini of George Washington University and Claudia Goldin of Harvard looked at private colleges in five states, comparing those that are eligible for federal Title IV education loans--which is determined by factors like age, accreditation, and full-time programs--to those that are not. The study controlled for "program length, enrollment, year of operation, and a rich set of program, county, and year fixed effects."

By Cellini and Goldin's count, the for-profit college sector is larger by 670,000 students than the number cited by federal agencies, which...