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But as anyone who’s seen an infomercial knows, affordability isn’t just about cost, it’s about the repayment terms. Paying $1,800 for a Bowflex up front may cost about the same as eighteen payments of $99.95, but it’s a lot less affordable. When President Obama said in the State of the Union speech…

You can’t talk about contemporary higher education without talking about money, which is fine, because only fools are even tempted to try. Between 1979 and 2014, the price of tuition and fees at four-year nonprofit US colleges, adjusted for inflation, has jumped 197 percent at private schools and 2…

Using the data carefully and anxiously prepared by millions of kids about the human capital they’ve accumulated over the previous eighteen years, higher education institutions make decisions: collectively evaluating, accepting, and cutting hopeful children in tranches like collateralized debt oblig…

[...] In a culture that increasingly rewards only exceptional accomplishment, any disadvantage or challenge can seem like a disqualification. One mom told Francis that because she had expected her son to star on the football team, his ADD diagnosis made her feel the way a parent who had expected a …

This sort of intensive training isn’t just for the children of intellectuals; the theory behind the rhetoric advocating universal college attendance is that any and all kids should aspire to this level of work. College admissions have become the focus not only of secondary schooling but of contempo…