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Comment by ghobs91 | Hacker News Reader

If all people were buying Teslas using government-backed loans that the gov was then responsible to collect, while Tesla got paid up front and claimed to be a non-profit, they would absolutely have the right to tell them what they could charge.

If a university is going to call itself non-profit, they should only be charging whatevers needed to cover costs of operating. Tuition has skyrocketed in the last 10-20 years, with no reasonable explanation for what aspect of operating costs has gone up enough to justify that.

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> they should only be charging whatevers needed to cover costs of operating.

Effectively that is the case. The problem is that when you have more to spend, your costs go up. You might opt to buy higher quality equipment, for example. But most especially, when you have more money to spend, your workers want to receive more money. A lot of the income gains that the colleges have seen have gone straight back out as administrative costs.

First, tuition and costs have both gone up for universities, and you can make up whatever costs you want. New sports facility? Part of the costs. 7-figure salaries for administrators? Part of the costs. How would you decide which costs are "reasonable" and which aren't? It's a real morass -- what you are suggesting, to be effective, would require government micromanagement of private education.

Second, government already runs public education -- those institutions cost less, but costs have still gone up and tuition has still skyrocketed.

Third, despite the fact that Medicaid does impose price caps, both the list price and costs for medical care have also skyrocketed.

Explain again how price caps solve anything? Every market with price manipulation looks like a disaster. Housing (rent control) and medical care (medicaid & insurance payments are limited or contractually negotiated) are just two examples.

I think what we want are not mandated prices, but mandated transparency in value, so that you know if the price is worth it!

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