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As someone under a ton of debt, I'd like to know the answer to your question too.

For a fun-time experiement, plot college cost vs. :

minimum wage inflation health care

since the 70s or so.

Right around 1980ish, health care and college costs started heading for the roof relative to inflation.

edit: I haven't worked the math to differentiate between average cost of ivy league schools and average cost of state schools. I think the current difference sits at 4x or so for list price.



Right around 1980ish, health care and college costs started heading for the roof relative to inflation.

Interesting - right around the time computers started making business processes way more efficient, a few areas unaffected by computers started skyrocketing in cost (relative to inflation).

I wonder what could be causing this phenomenon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumols_cost_disease


Both this and the other link aren't working, try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect


Are you seriously suggesting that the costs of healthcare provision and education are unaffected by computers?

I'd be surprised if there wasn't somewhere you can do an online degree in the application of IT for cost savings in healthcare.


So far, I don't think the computing revolution has significantly affected healthcare or educational productivity.

Until we start replacing teachers with Khan or similar products, productivity is capped at # of students=~30 x number of teachers. Same for medicine.



404?


The hyperlink is taking out the ' for some reason. Not sure why exactly.


It must be some protection against code injection. Here is the link in a different format, avoiding the explicit single quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease




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