University Stagnation
Arnold Kling has a good question in this post on secular stagnation. For most questions of the sort "would you rather the 1985 version of X for the 1985 (nominal) price or the 2015 version at the 2015 price, I would choose the latter. TV's? Cars? Phones? Computers? All way better for the price today. This of course implies that for many of these items, the inflation rate is really negative if we could adequately take into account quality and technology changes. Services are a different story. For health care, I would take the 2015 version and price. I would have to think about my answer for a while in air travel (I think folks overly romanticize their memory of air travel -- I was travelling PeopleExpress to Newark in the early 80's and that really, really sucked. My seat and meal are worse nowadays but I am more likely to be on time).
So Kling then asks about college education. These are convenient dates for me since I graduated in 1984. So would I rather Princeton in 1984 at about $10,000 or Princeton today at $60,000. I guess education-wise, the liberal arts course catalog at Princeton in 1984 was more closely matched to my interests, and I don't get any sense the faculty today is better or worse in either period but it likely was more politically diverse in 1984. So academically, I would easily give the nod to 1984. For the ancillary stuff, though, the change in quality has been substantial. The dorms, the dining options, the residential college system, the student center -- all the non-academic stuff is way better today. However, all that stuff is a lot of what is driving up the nominal price -- is it worth it? Yes, I suppose so if someone else is paying, lol. Probably not if I am paying my own way through.
