Newsweek's Mad Men cover and the cost of an education

Tina Brown, the latest editor in chief at Newsweek, celebrates the season's return of Mad Men, with a splashy retro cover, 1960 era magazine graphics and advertisements, and an interesting cost of living index.

Note the price comparison of common items during the Mad Men era vs. now. Of interest to me is the huge rise in the cost of a college education, adjusted for inflation, from then to now.

This is especially troubling news for our large, middle-class country. Universal access to high-quality college education is the key to prosperity and social mobility. President Obama has been right to criticize colleges for escalating costs and state legislatures for inadequate college funding.

Paul Krugman wrote about this in a recent column:

For the past couple of generations, choosing a less expensive school has generally meant going to a public university rather than a private university. But these days, public higher education is very much under siege, facing even harsher budget cuts than the rest of the public sector. Adjusted for inflation, state support for higher education has fallen 12 percent over the past five years, even as the number of students has continued to rise; in California, support is down by 20 percent.

One result has been soaring fees. Inflation-adjusted tuition at public four-year colleges has risen by more than 70 percent over the past decade. So good luck on finding that college “that has a little lower price.”

Another result is that cash-strapped educational institutions have been cutting back in areas that are expensive to teach — which also happen to be precisely the areas the economy needs. For example, public colleges in a number of states, including Florida and Texas, have eliminated entire departments in engineering and computer science.