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FAIL FAST is the key of success. Yes I am in favor of starting a startups just after collage or during collage.If you fail you learn if you pass you earn.I know a couple of tycoons who started skepticaling with the problems since their collage life and later know as famous personalities.Here is the list of 20 companies all began with a simple vision and college roots. Plus, they’re 20 of the coolest companies in existence today:1. 3dimFounder(s): Andrea Colaço & Ahmed KirmaniCollege: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyYear Founded: 2013The premise of 3dim is that it completely changes daily interactions with smart devices for everyday users through a 3D gesture sensor. That way, you no longer need to touch – just gesture. It works under all lighting considers, under any amount of power and on all smart devices – including home appliances. The technology is based on software algorithms, which can be integrated into smart devices.2. A Small OrangeFounder(s): Douglas HannaCollege: Duke UniversityYear Founded: 2003A Small Orange is a web hosting company which serving websites with a strong customer service focus. The company began with the goal of purchasing web hosting companies that were not performing to their maximum potential and developing them. From there, the company determines whether to sell or retain the business to leaser servers to customers for their own websites.3. EnvoyNowFounder(s): Chad Massura, Anthony Zhang, Gabriel Quintela and Nick WangCollege: University of Southern CaliforniaYear Founded: 2014Have you ever been in the mood for a food on campus but want it delivered? Enter EnvoyNow. What’s basically a way to get whatever food you want when you want it, "Envoys (delivery people) enable restaurants around campus to offer delivery, taking away the nightmare of providing delivery away from the restaurant." Basically, they help restaurants with delivery services so that the service is provided - and college students get what they want to eat quickly.4. AthleteTraxFounder(s): Jon Halpern, Brian Gross, Rey CorianoCollege: George Washington UniversityYear Founded: 2012An all-in-one for athletes, AthleteTrax is a team member’s dream. Through AthleteTrax, players, parents, coaches and administrators can remain on the same page in scheduling, communicating and fundraising. It allows a member to create or import a list of contacts and, through a share function, effectively communicate with your entire team (or select members) as necessary. It streamlines the process of changes practice times, scheduling competitions and events. Additionally, tools allow payments to be processed via credit card with a small fee (along with tracking), which means that the hub facilitates collecting payments from team members in addition to fundraising from broad audiences. Teams also receive exclusive deals on travel, equipment and apparel purchases as well.5. DellFounder(s): Michael DellCollege: University of Texas at AustinYear Founded:1984You know the name, but do you know the story of Dell? As a freshman majoring in pre-mad at the University of Texas at Austin, 19-year-old Michael Dell founded a computer company then named PC’s Limited with only $1,000. His revolutionary idea was to sell personal computers directly to consumers – something that really hadn’t been done before. He threw his focus into the idea that providing custom PCs to anyone and everyone was the way of the future and, well, the rest is history.6. DropboxFounder(s): Arash Ferdowski & Drew HoustonCollege: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyYear Founded: 2007MIT students, Arash Ferdowski and Drew Houston became tired of email’s inability to send and receive large files. They decided the system needed a solution and, as a result, they founded Dropbox. Dropbox is a file sharing service, which allows users to store and send large files. The company has quickly risen the ranks to become the leader in file sharing and what began as a small, simple idea has significantly grown to allow team collaboration, onboarding/offboarding, secure file sharing and more. Millions of individuals use Dropbox throughout the globe to send and share files and many simply utilize the service to store documents for safekeeping.7. EarTop TechnologiesFounder(s): Ketan Rahangdale & Jaiyu NiCollege: University of MiamiYear Founded: 2011As a DJ who spent his nights tangled in wires setting up equipment before spinning in clubs, Ketan Rahangdale was never a fan of wires. He wanted to find a better way. EarTop Technologies creates wireless, audio and video technologies. The company focuses on wireless adapters and wireless devices, ultimately striving to make wires obsolete. The company’s first and most recent product, Flow, plugs into the cable jack on headphones or other audio equipment and uses Bluetooth technology transforming them into wireless devices without sacrificing the sound qualify. Their high quality products range from wireless speakers and headphones to other wireless technology adaptors, many of which rival popular Bluetooth products.8. FacebookFounder(s): Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum & Chris HughesCollege: Harvard UniversityYear Founded: 2004If you don’t know the story of Facebook, you may have been living under a rock. However, to omit Facebook from a list of college startups would be unheard of. Just in case you haven’t heard, here’s the story in a nutshell: Genius Mark Zuckerberg creates a social network while attending Harvard, drops out to focus on the website full-time which actually turns out to be a great decision because he’s now one of the most successful innovators of modern day. Zuckerberg’s estimated net worth at the ripe old age of 30 years is currently $34.4 billion (let’s just note that’s more billions than years).9. GoogleFounder(s): Larry Page & Sergey BrinCollege: Stanford UniversityYear Founded: 1998It all began on that first campus tour at Stanford, where Larry Page and Sergey Brin met for the first time. Little did they know they would go on to create a world-revolutionizing website – but that’s exactly what happened. The pair became friends and later went on to develop the idea for the world’s most powerful and effective search engine while they were PhD students working together on the Stanford Digital Library Project. Google’s original domain name was “G Suite | University IT.” The name “google” is a play on the mathematics term “googol,” which describes a number that’s a one followed by one-hundred zeros. Google’s success quickly followed when users began to find that the search results were extremely relevant and that’s what the site quickly became known for. The company continues to grow to epic proportions. Although it’s cause for question - how much larger can you get?10. iCrackedFounder(s): AJ Forsythe, Anthony MartinCollege: California Polytechnic State UniversityYear Founded: 2010According to a CNBC survey conducted in 2012, half of all U.S. households own at least one Apply product. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder that iCracked’s founders saw the demand for service repair. They were right. iCracked is now one of the largest iPhone, iPod and iPad repair companies with more than 687 certified iTechs in the United States – that’s not including the 11 additional countries worldwide. iCracked is now known as the world’s largest on-demand repair and trade-in network for iOS devices.11. HourlyNerdFounder(s): Rob Biederman, Peter Maglathlin, Patrick Petitti & Joe MillerCollege: Harvard UniversityYear Founded: 2013What began as a class project by three Harvard MBA students, HourlyNerd quickly rose the ranks with investment after investment to supply business consulting services and expertise to the masses. The company pairs talented MBA students with small businesses seeking help with projects, like mergers and acquisitions, strategies and marketing – all projects that don’t warrant a permanent hire for a small business. The start-up quickly rose to stardom when customers began to include big names like General Electric Company, Microsoft Corporate’s small and medium business program, American Apparel Inc., Coca-Cola Company. HourlyNerd consultant candidates began as MBA students but now tend to be MBA grads looking for flexible hours – often parents looking for family-friendly hours. Hourly rates for consultants range from $25 to $150, depending on expertise levels, with HourlyNerd taking 15% plus a 3% transaction fee.12. Insomnia CookiesFounder(s): Seth BerkowitzCollege: University of PennsylvaniaYear Founded: 2003When University of Pennsylvania junior Seth Berkowitz had a hankering for cookies during late night cram sessions, he decided to take action. Word spread quickly of Berkowitz’s baked goods and the business of late night baked goods was born. Insomnia Cookies is mainly campus-based and specializes in delivering warm, fresh-baked treats. With more than 50 locations, Insomnia cookies offers cookies, brownies, cookie cakes and cold milk to wash it all down. Most locations serve and deliver ice cream a well.13. Kinko’sFounder(s): Paul OrfaleaCollege: University of Southern CaliforniaYear Founded: 1970The Kinko’s story began when Paul Orfalea, a student at the University of Southern California (USC), happened to noticed a copy machine in the library and felt that more people should have access to the then-new technology. Orfalea rented a 100-square foot space with a $5,000 loan in 1970 near campus, which would later be known as the first Kinko’s. The space featured a single copier (2.5 cent copies), an offset press, film processing and a small section of school supply products. Kinko’s is named after Orfalea’s college nickname, “Kinko,” after his curly hair. After only five years, Kinko’s had 24 locations throughout California, which tripled four years after that. In 2004, Kinko’s was acquired by FedEx and was rebranded as FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print services throughout its more than 1,500 locations worldwide.14. MicrosoftFounder(s): Bill Gates & Paul AllenCollege: Harvard UniversityYear Founded: 1975Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft shortly after leaving Harvard to pursue the computer software company full time. Today, the software company is now an empire that paved the way for modern day technology and innovation. Currently, Gates’ net worth is $81.3 billion making him the second richest man in the world (beating out fierce competitors like Warren Buffett) according to Forbes. Gates has been the richest man in the world for 15 out of the last 20 years. Not too shabby for a college drop out. Then again, he did reshape the way the world sees computers and technology.15. ModclothFounder(s): Susan Gregg Koger & Eric KogerCollege: Carnegie Mellon UniversityYear Founded: 2002When Susan Gregg started dating Eric Koger, it was a match made in fashion website history. Both at Carnegie Mellon, he was a tech whiz and she into fashion. While shopping around, Susan found fabulous items at vintage sales and together they had the idea to use Eric’s expertise to create an ecommerce site to sell the items she acquired. They had tried eBay but it wasn’t as effective in getting across the fashion-forward focus that the two were looking to achieve, so the two decided designing a unique site was the way to go. Originally, the two planned to use the money from the sales to help pay for college textbooks and living expenses. It worked – and then some. The site took off and by 2005, ModCloth was receiving up to 70,000 unique shoppers daily. With the site’s success, the two knew they had a full-time career on their hands, but vintage picks weren’t cutting it. Vintage items are only offered in one size and don’t cater to the masses. They scaled the business model to trendy, indie picks with vintage inspiration. ModCloth continues to grow 40% annually and grew to more than 450 employees in 2013.16. NapsterFounder(s): Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker & John FanningCollege: Northeastern UniversityYear Founded: 1999It’s not the same as it once was but, at its peak, Napster served up to 80 million users. That’s pretty impressive. Not to mention it changed culture and the way the world downloads music through the peer-to-peer network platform, where friends could share music. If you weren’t around at the time to witness it, record companies and artists alike were brought to their knees when Napster unleashed its software for free MP3 downloads. Eventually, all good things come to an end (yes, it was illegal but it wasn’t so crystal clear at the time) and the company was sued to the ends of the earth for pirating, copyright infringement, etc. But, it was great while it lasted. Now we know the laws. Thanks, Napster. And Metallica.17. RedditFounder(s): Steve Huffman & Alexis OhanianCollege: University of VirginiaYear Founded: 2005Founded as an information sharing website, Reddit was conceived of by two University of Virginia students. There’s one simple thing that distinguishes Reddit from other information sharing websites: users have the ability to vote on the content. Now known as the “upvote” system, users have an influence on what appears at the top of the site, which obviously gains the most exposure. The site is now among the most popular in the world, going from startup to receiving more than a billion page views monthly. As of 2006, Reddit was purchased by and became a subsidiary of Condé Nast.18. SnapchatFounder(s): Evan Spiegel & Robert MurphyCollege: Stanford UniversityYear Founded: 2011It all started with a bad decision to send a photo. When a frat brother entered Spiegel’s room to chat about a photo he regretted sending, the two discussed how it would be easier if the photo magically disappeared once the recipient viewed it. If you haven’t heard about Snapchat, it’s an app where users are able to take photos or record videos and add on text or draw. Then, you send the photo or video to a recipient(s) with the app (and has accepted you on Snapchat). Additionally, users are able to determine the length of the time the recipient(s) can view the “Snap” (photo or video) – anywhere from one to ten seconds. If a recipient decides to take a screenshot of the photo you sent via Snapchat, you will be notified – thus safeguarding users against the distribution of any embarrassing or unsavory photos. Originally titled “Picaboo,” it launched to less than stellar download numbers. Later changed to Snapchat - something began to happen and, suddenly, it took off. According to Yahoo Finance News, “Last fall Spiegel reportedly turned down as much as $3 billion from Facebook (FB) and $4 billion from Google (GOOG).” As of May 2014, “the app's users were sending 700 million photos and videos per day, while Snapchat Stories content was being viewed 500 million times per day,” according to Wikipedia.19. WordPressFounder(s): Matt Mullenweg & Mike LittleCollege: University of HoustonYear Founded: 2003It’s the free blogging site – no, platform – that changed it all. As an Open Source project, WordPress can be can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone. It’s no secret that ideas are spread and shared with the help of blogs but, without the help of free platforms like Wordpress, that capability wouldn’t exist. It transformed the way websites were created, making it possible for everyday people to have them, too. Simply put, it changed the way everyday people access the internet from looking at it, to shaping it. Blogging may have exploded in the early 2000s, but there’s no sign it’s slowing down just yet. According to the site, WordPress is currently the most popular online publishing platform – powering over 20% of the web. That’s a network of more than 409 million people who view more than 15.5 billion pages monthly. WordPress users publish 41.7 million new posts monthly, with blogs written in over 120 languages. All of that, started by a college freshman. Impressive, no?20. Yahoo!Founder(s): Jerry Yang & David FiloCollege: Stanford UniversityYear Founded: 1994Founded by a pair of PhD candidates at Stanford University in 1994, what is now known as Yahoo! was originally a simple list of the two student’s favorite web sites named “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web.”Source

No.Let’s get this straight…There is no legitimate reason for college to have become as expensive as it’s become. Free College does nothing to reform the changes that have made college more expensive.The cost of a college education has skyrocketed since the 1970s with the Price Of College Increasing Almost 8 Times Faster Than Wages, according to Forbes Magazine.The cost of tuition has gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation.At times when the cost of energy has gone up by much smaller percentages, we’ve seen oil company executives hauled up in front of congress for questioning and verbal excoriation.So far, college and university presidents have been spared that kind of treatment, which is unfortunate.The fact is that there is no legitimate reason for college to have become so expensive so quickly. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, the issue isn’t lack of public sector spending. As Law Professor Paul F. Campos has pointed out…“In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.”The amount we spend on higher education has increased a increased more than 5 times faster than the amount we spend on national defense. The factors that contribute to the increase in cost are completely within the control of those running educational institutions, and at every step they’ve made the wrong decision.So what is making college so expensive.(1) Bloated AdministrationThere has been a shockingly large expansion in the number of administrators on college campuses. That expansion has created an artificial demand that has driven up the pay in that field. Again, Professor. Campos puts it better than I could.“a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.”Not only is the number of administrators exploded, the amount we’re paying administrators has skyrocketed.“On the other hand, there are no valid arguments to support the recent trend toward seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university administrators, unless one considers evidence-free assertions about “the market” to be intellectually rigorous.”In many ways the administrators have helped create an atmosphere where they are needed. If you’re going to implement a student speech code to make students be nice, you’re going to need someone that students can complain to if someone has “handyman” instead of “handyperson” and that person might well have a total compensation package over six figures.According to Ivy Kaplan in The Globe Post, “between 2003 to 2013, many four-year institutions spent more on administration, student services and academic support than they did on instruction, according to the Delta Cost Project.”(2) There is no REAL price to tuitionThe bloated administration tells us where all the extra money is going, but it doesn’t explain the mechanism used to rip-off students and parents. In this section I’ll attempt to explain the practices that are legal, but shouldn’t be.Let’s say that a college has too many Asian students and too many white females, and it really wants to create a student body that meets certain ethnic goals. It’s going to charge “more desirable” students a different price. So the price basically changes depending on where you’re from or where you’r ancestors are from. According to Adam Davidson, This could be the 'single most important' reason why college tuition is skyrocketing.In essence, the higher the tuition cost, the easier it is for universities to recruit the exact type of students they want by offering them tuition discounts, according to Kevin Crockett, a consultant with Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a firm that helps colleges and universities set prices."I've got to have enough room under the top-line sticker price," Crockett told The Times Magazine. Davidson explained: "A school that charges $50,000 is able to offer a huge range of inducements to different sorts of students: some could pay $10,000, others $30,000 or $40,000. And a handful can pay the full price."The “starting price” of the Toyota 86 is $28,000 for the GT version.Now if car dealerships operated the way colleges did the base price for the same car would be $60,000. If there are too many Asians driving Toyota 86s, then Mr. Nguyen is going to pay the full $60,000. If there are too many white females driving 86s than Ms. Anderson is going to pay the full $60,000. But let’s say Toyota decides that there aren’t enough Samoans driving Toyota 86s, so Mr. Leota is going to get his for $20,000, with part of Mr. Nguyan’s and Ms. Anderson’s $60,000 paying part of the cost of his car. Maybe Toyota wants someone more athletes driving Toyota 86s so the price drops to $15,000 for anyone who ran the Boston Marathon. Maybe Toyota isn’t selling enough 86s in northern states so they reduce the price for drivers living in Virginia Minnesota and Helena Montana to $18,000. The full $60,000 price paid by drivers in California and New York subsidizes the drivers in Montana and Minnesota. Maybe Toyota realizes that the average person can’t afford a Toyota 68 that costs $60,000 so they create special prices so that a whole bunch of people get to buy the car for less than half the sticker price and anybody who can afford the full sticker price has to pay $60,000 for a $28,000 car.If that sounds like a crazy system, it is. But it’s exactly the way the price of tuition works. Basically, for the last couple decades colleges, especially private liberal arts colleges, have used the kind of business practices that would be illegal in the rest of the world.(3) Financial Aid May Be Driving Up TuitionLet’s go back to the car analogy for a minute. Years ago I purchased a new Jeep Wrangler for about $14,000 by basically telling the dealer that was the total money I had and I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, pay more than I had.The dealer eventually let the car go for for $14,000. But what if there was a government program that would add $10,000 to whatever I had to spend. Do you think the dealer would have let me drive my new Jeep off the lot for only $4000 from my pocket? Hell No! If they knew the government was kicking in money they would have charged me $24,000.Writing in Forbes, Preston Cooper explains How Unlimited Student Loans Drive Up Tuition through a similar process.A 2015 study found that a dollar of subsidized (non-PLUS) student loans increases published tuition by 58 cents at a typical college, with larger effects once reductions in institutional financial aid are taken into account. An NBER paperissued last year concluded that changes to federal student loans are more than sufficient to explain tuition increases at private nonprofit colleges. And a 2014 analysis found that for-profit colleges eligible for federal student aid charged tuition 78% higher than that of similar but aid-ineligible institutions.(4) Proliferation of dubious courses, majors and departmentsWhen colleges had a smaller number of majors and those majors had a more prescribed path to completion, there was a certain economy of scale. If you are paying an English professor $100,000/year and he teaches a mandatory course on Shakespeare to 100 students, that’s pretty good value for the money. If another professor paid the same amount is teaching some bizarre interest of the professor to 20 students, it basically costs the same as the 100 students in the core class.Granted, there should be some room for individual interest within a major, but students have been able to satisfy graduation requirements at various schools with:Deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Emerson College)Tree Climbing (Cornell)Philosophy of the Simpsons (UC Berkeley)Calvin and Hobbes (Oberlin)Queer Positions (Oberlin)Tattoes in American Popular Culture (Scripps)Getting Dressed (Princeton)Seminar in Transgender studies (CSULA)Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame (U. South Carolina)How to Watch TV (Montclaire State U)Makin’ Whoopi: Goldberg’s Canon (Bates College)History of Surfing (UCSB)Demystifying the Hipster (Tufts)Transgender Poetry (Hunter College)Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse (Michigan state)OK, I actually like the last one.One can debate the merits of any particular course, but the fact is that offering a smorgasbord of exotica is a lot less cost effective than having a clear defined path to a degree. It would make far more sense, and be more cost effective, to have fewer and more academically rigorous choices. And I can live without my Zombie Apocalypse course if you can live without your Lady Gaga course. And neither of us getting what we want can make college more affordable.But the exotica doesn’t stop at individual courses. U.C. Santa Cruz has a History of Consciousness graduate program where students get to navel gaze on their own political beliefs.Give me another hit of that consciousness man.You can major in Sexuality at San Francisco State University. You can major in Canadian Studies at a number of universities including Duke, John Hopkins, SUNY and U of Vermont.Having specific majors in Canadian or any other studies is an example of something that can be more effectively covered in previously existing legitimate majors. There’s no reason a scholar interested in Canada can’t just study History, Literature or Politics and do individual research projects or their senior thesis on Canada.Unless we address the four trends that are driving up the cost of education and actually reverse the direction of those trends, the price of college is going to keep going up and up. Making college free just means somebody else is paying for it and might actually make the problem worse.

No. The price is going up, but not due to demand. Many colleges are facing serious problems do to decreasing demand. As NPR reported in Fewer Students Are Going To College. Here's Why That Matters.This fall, there were nearly 250,000 fewer students enrolled in college than a year ago, according to new numbers out Monday from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks college enrollment by student.And this year isn't the first time this has happened. Over the past eight years, college enrollment nationwide has fallen about 11%. Every sector — public state schools, community colleges, for-profits and private liberal arts schools — has felt the decline, though it has been especially painful for small private colleges, where, in some cases, institutions have been forced to close.The cost of a college education has skyrocketed since the 1970s with the Price Of College Increasing Almost 8 Times Faster Than Wages, according to Forbes Magazine.The cost of tuition has gone up at more than twice the rate of inflation.At times when the cost of energy has gone up by much smaller percentages, we’ve seen oil company executives hauled up in front of congress for questioning and verbal excoriation.So far, college and university presidents have been spared that kind of treatment, which is unfortunate.The fact is that there is no legitimate reason for college to have become so expensive so quickly. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, the issue isn’t lack of public sector spending. As Law Professor Paul F. Campos has pointed out…“In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.”The amount we spend on higher education has increased a increased more than 5 times faster than the amount we spend on national defense. The factors that contribute to the increase in cost are completely within the control of those running educational institutions, and at every step they’ve made the wrong decision.So what is making college so expensive.(1) Bloated AdministrationThere has been a shockingly large expansion in the number of administrators on college campuses. That expansion has created an artificial demand that has driven up the pay in that field. Again, Professor. Campos puts it better than I could.“a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.”Not only is the number of administrators exploded, the amount we’re paying administrators has skyrocketed.“On the other hand, there are no valid arguments to support the recent trend toward seven-figure salaries for high-ranking university administrators, unless one considers evidence-free assertions about “the market” to be intellectually rigorous.”In many ways the administrators have helped create an atmosphere where they are needed. If you’re going to implement a student speech code to make students be nice, you’re going to need someone that students can complain to if someone has “handyman” instead of “handyperson” and that person might well have a total compensation package over six figures.According to Ivy Kaplan in The Globe Post, “between 2003 to 2013, many four-year institutions spent more on administration, student services and academic support than they did on instruction, according to the Delta Cost Project.”This uncontrolled expansion of administration and increase in their pay represents a huge wealth transfer from students and parents……to highly credentialed college administrators.(2) There is no REAL price to tuitionThe bloated administration tells us where all the extra money is going, but it doesn’t explain the mechanism used to rip-off students and parents. In this section I’ll attempt to explain the practices that are legal, but shouldn’t be.Let’s say that a college has too many Asian students and too many white females, and it really wants to create a student body that meets certain ethnic goals. It’s going to charge “more desirable” students a different price. So the price basically changes depending on where you’re from or where you’r ancestors are from. According to Adam Davidson, This could be the 'single most important' reason why college tuition is skyrocketing.In essence, the higher the tuition cost, the easier it is for universities to recruit the exact type of students they want by offering them tuition discounts, according to Kevin Crockett, a consultant with Ruffalo Noel Levitz, a firm that helps colleges and universities set prices."I've got to have enough room under the top-line sticker price," Crockett told The Times Magazine. Davidson explained: "A school that charges $50,000 is able to offer a huge range of inducements to different sorts of students: some could pay $10,000, others $30,000 or $40,000. And a handful can pay the full price."The “starting price” of the Toyota 86 is $28,000 for the GT version.Now if car dealerships operated the way colleges did the base price for the same car would be $60,000. If there are too many Asians driving Toyota 86s, then Mr. Nguyen is going to pay the full $60,000. If there are too many white females driving 86s than Ms. Anderson is going to pay the full $60,000. But let’s say Toyota decides that there aren’t enough Samoans driving Toyota 86s, so Mr. Leota is going to get his for $20,000, with part of Mr. Nguyan’s and Ms. Anderson’s $60,000 paying part of the cost of his car. Maybe Toyota wants someone more athletes driving Toyota 86s so the price drops to $15,000 for anyone who ran the Boston Marathon. Maybe Toyota isn’t selling enough 86s in northern states so they reduce the price for drivers living in Virginia Minnesota and Helena Montana to $18,000. The full $60,000 price paid by drivers in California and New York subsidizes the drivers in Montana and Minnesota. Maybe Toyota realizes that the average person can’t afford a Toyota 68 that costs $60,000 so they create special prices so that a whole bunch of people get to buy the car for less than half the sticker price and anybody who can afford the full sticker price has to pay $60,000 for a $28,000 car.If that sounds like a crazy system, it is. But it’s exactly the way the price of tuition works. Basically, for the last couple decades colleges, especially private liberal arts colleges, have used the kind of business practices that would be illegal in the rest of the world.(3) Financial Aid May Be Driving Up TuitionLet’s go back to the car analogy for a minute. Years ago I purchased a new Jeep Wrangler for about $14,000 by basically telling the dealer that was the total money I had and I wouldn’t, under any circumstances, pay more than I had.The dealer eventually let the car go for for $14,000. But what if there was a government program that would add $10,000 to whatever I had to spend. Do you think the dealer would have let me drive my new Jeep off the lot for only $4000 from my pocket? Hell No! If they knew the government was kicking in money they would have charged me $24,000.Writing in Forbes, Preston Cooper explains How Unlimited Student Loans Drive Up Tuition through a similar process.A 2015 study found that a dollar of subsidized (non-PLUS) student loans increases published tuition by 58 cents at a typical college, with larger effects once reductions in institutional financial aid are taken into account. An NBER paperissued last year concluded that changes to federal student loans are more than sufficient to explain tuition increases at private nonprofit colleges. And a 2014 analysis found that for-profit colleges eligible for federal student aid charged tuition 78% higher than that of similar but aid-ineligible institutions.(4) Proliferation of dubious courses, majors and departmentsWhen colleges had a smaller number of majors and those majors had a more prescribed path to completion, there was a certain economy of scale. If you are paying an English professor $100,000/year and he teaches a mandatory course on Shakespeare to 100 students, that’s pretty good value for the money. If another professor paid the same amount is teaching some bizarre interest of the professor to 20 students, it basically costs the same as the 100 students in the core class.Granted, there should be some room for individual interest within a major, but students have been able to satisfy graduation requirements at various schools with:Deconstructing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Emerson College)Tree Climbing (Cornell)Philosophy of the Simpsons (UC Berkeley)Calvin and Hobbes (Oberlin)Queer Positions (Oberlin)Tattoes in American Popular Culture (Scripps)Getting Dressed (Princeton)Seminar in Transgender studies (CSULA)Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame (U. South Carolina)How to Watch TV (Montclaire State U)Makin’ Whoopi: Goldberg’s Canon (Bates College)History of Surfing (UCSB)Demystifying the Hipster (Tufts)Transgender Poetry (Hunter College)Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse (Michigan state)OK, I actually like the last one.One can debate the merits of any particular course, but the fact is that offering a smorgasbord of exotica is a lot less cost effective than having a clear defined path to a degree. It would make far more sense, and be more cost effective, to have fewer and more academically rigorous choices. And I can live without my Zombie Apocalypse course if you can live without your Lady Gaga course. And neither of us getting what we want can make college more affordable.But the exotica doesn’t stop at individual courses. U.C. Santa Cruz has a History of Consciousness graduate program where students get to navel gaze on their own political beliefs.Give me another hit of that consciousness man.You can major in Sexuality at San Francisco State University. You can major in Canadian Studies at a number of universities including Duke, John Hopkins, SUNY and U of Vermont.Having specific majors in Canadian or any other studies is an example of something that can be more effectively covered in previously existing legitimate majors. There’s no reason a scholar interested in Canada can’t just study History, Literature or Politics and do individual research projects or their senior thesis on Canada.Unless we address the four trends that are driving up the cost of education and actually reverse the direction of those trends, the price of college is going to keep going up and up. Making college free just means somebody else is paying for it and might actually make the problem worse.