If you see economic phenomena that seem weird or counterintuitive, the most common explanation, which applies in this case, is "price discrimination", which is the desire of sellers to extract higher prices from those who are willing and able to pay, while accepting lower prices from those who cannot.
In the case of private colleges: "By providing grants, fellowships, and scholarships, these institutions forgo more than half the revenue they otherwise would collect if they charged all students the tuition and fee sticker price."
From the Tax Profs Blog.
I suspect this is true of public schools too. My daughters both attended a top public school in Illinois, and we paid essentially nothing, a few thousand a year. It helped that they are bright kids, and they also used verified award offers from other schools to negotiate (bully) their preferred school into offering more. But in fact the school was very quick in countering those other offers.
ReplyDeleteUnrelated here, but you may not have seen this:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413?ref=thebrowser.com
Nothing terribly surprising in it, but it is interesting.
@TomBridgeland
ReplyDeleteYeah. I saw it. Did a throwaway Facebook post to bookmark it for future reference.