Gold averaged $317/ounce in 1985. Today it's knocking on the door of $1,430, up 351%. But the cost of a college education is up 538% since then, according to this story from Bloomberg:
"[T]uition expenses have increased 538 percent in the 28-year period, compared with a 286 percent jump in medical costs and a 121 percent gain in the consumer price index. The ballooning charges have generated swelling demand for educational loans while threatening to make college unaffordable for domestic and international students."
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I won't quibble about the inflation measure. I show the "all items" CPI July 1985/July 2013 up about 115%, but that just raises the question about what is the correct way to measure inflation.
Arguably the price of gold is the correct measure of inflation in the economy, not the CPI. And by that standard the cost of a college education has risen just 53% more than gold measured inflation has risen in 28 years, not 345% more, while medical costs have actually failed to keep up with inflation as measured by gold over the same period. Some maintain that most of the actual increased cost of college has to do with the increased costs of room and board, not with tuition. That seems entirely plausible. Tuition and fees where I went to school in 1985 are up 300% vs. 350% for gold.
People are finding college to be unaffordable in the same way that they are finding gold to be unaffordable. It's not that the prices are up. It's that the dollar has shrunk, the cruellest tax of all because it takes you 30 years to realize you've been robbed somewhere along the line, but just where you cannot tell.
Heresy.
Truth.
We report, you decide.
