The University as Business A number of colleges and universities have announced steep tuition increases for next year—much steeper than the current, very low, rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because of a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common S1.______ stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; S2.______ and increasingly the outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of business firms. The rise in tuitions S3.______ may reflect the fact economic uncertainty increases the demand for S4.______ education. The biggest cost of being in the school is foregoing S5.______ income from a job (this is primarily a factor in graduate-and-profes- sional-school tuition) ; the poor one’’s job prospects, the more sense S6.______ it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education, in order to make oneself more marketable. The ways which universities make themselves attractive to S7.______ students include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students a governance role, and eliminate required courses. Sky- S8.______ high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the S9.______ rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlier from professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities, the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely of need—just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on S10.______ their best customer.