Should College Come with a Money-Back Guarantee?

Today, costs loom large in public discussions about the problems in higher education. That's no wonder. Tuition at four-year private colleges has grown at an average annual rate of 2.3% above inflation over the past 10 years. Four-year public and two-year institutions have seen similar trends, with tuition growing at an annual rate of 3.1% and 3.0% beyond inflation, respectively. Still, the single-minded focus on cost often diverts attention from a more basic problem: risk--the possibility that a college graduate's earnings will not be sufficient to enable loan repayment or, even more fundamentally, to justify the cost of enrollment, regardless of how the enrollment was paid for. This paper explores how to understand risk as a greater challenge to higher education than cost alone and considers the ways that colleges have taken steps to address this core challenge.