Thanks for pointing this out -- I've heard some people back this claim, but I still find it confusing.
In a graph in that wikipedia article, we see that from 1998-2018, average hourly earnings increased by less than 100%, but tuition increased by more than 150%. If wages for university staff (who aren't becoming more productive) are rising to match wages for those who _are_ becoming more productive, why should tuition costs rise significantly faster than the rise in other wages?
Further, one statement in the education section sounds right to me:
> The economists Gary Rhoades and Joanna Frye went further in a 2015 study and argued that the Baumol effect could not explain rising tuition costs at all, as "relative academic labor costs have gone down as tuition has gone up".
And we know there's a trend towards shifting teaching responsibilities from tenure-track faculty to cheaper adjuncts. And from anecdata, I get the impression that in the humanities especially, salaries _are_ quite low and raises are currently below inflation.
And my understanding is also that the trend at many schools is towards larger classes e.g. when UC Berkeley increased the freshman class size by a third, there was not an across-the-board increase for departments to hire a proportional increase in faculty and staff, nor did existing faculty and staff get a raise ... so the same people are asked to just teach larger classes (does that count as a productivity increase?), and students just get less interaction with their professors.
In a graph in that wikipedia article, we see that from 1998-2018, average hourly earnings increased by less than 100%, but tuition increased by more than 150%. If wages for university staff (who aren't becoming more productive) are rising to match wages for those who _are_ becoming more productive, why should tuition costs rise significantly faster than the rise in other wages?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect#/media/File:Pric...
Further, one statement in the education section sounds right to me:
> The economists Gary Rhoades and Joanna Frye went further in a 2015 study and argued that the Baumol effect could not explain rising tuition costs at all, as "relative academic labor costs have gone down as tuition has gone up".
And we know there's a trend towards shifting teaching responsibilities from tenure-track faculty to cheaper adjuncts. And from anecdata, I get the impression that in the humanities especially, salaries _are_ quite low and raises are currently below inflation.
And my understanding is also that the trend at many schools is towards larger classes e.g. when UC Berkeley increased the freshman class size by a third, there was not an across-the-board increase for departments to hire a proportional increase in faculty and staff, nor did existing faculty and staff get a raise ... so the same people are asked to just teach larger classes (does that count as a productivity increase?), and students just get less interaction with their professors.