Joseph Stiglitz on the Cost of Higher Education

I recently sat down with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in his office at Columbia Business School.

In this clip, Stiglitz talks about how rising tuition coupled with stagnating incomes isolates parts of the economy.

(Note: Without knowing it, I provided a rebuttal to his point in a video last month.)

Have a look. (A transcript follows.)

Joseph Stiglitz: Tuition has gone way up. California's over 100%. Meanwhile, incomes in the middle have been stagnating or falling, so people, families' ability to afford higher education for their children has gone down. Access is more difficult, and even if you can get into one of the elite schools, the problem with an elite school, if you can get in one of the elite schools, the elite schools have what they call needs-blind admissions, where if you get in they'll pay for your expenses, if you need them. The point is that people from the bottom half of the population don't have the high school and primary education that qualifies them so that even though their admission is needs blind, only about 8 to 9 percent of the enrollment in these elite schools comes from the bottom 50% of the population."

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