Carey Fisher wrote:

> I'm not confusing anything.  

Maybe not, but you are not clearly separating between cost and price, and
who pays for what exactly.

> Here, I'm speaking of the cost to the student which is the price the
> college charges. And the cost to the student is going up because there
> are more dollars chasing a (relatively) fixed supply of college
> (facilities, professors, etc).  

Ok. In terms of the product "college education", that would then be the
price of that. (The product cost is what it costs to produce and sell it,
that is college building, staff etc. The price is what it costs to the
consumer. We just need to get to a common terminology.)

> The supply is going up, thus increased cost to the taxpayer,

Now why is that? If the price of college education goes up, the colleges
(if I understand you correctly, you're talking about public colleges funded
by the taxpayer) have more revenue. In a normal market situation, this
would generally lead to increased profit.

> With the increase in college enrollment, the colleges are hiring more
> faculty and building new facilities. So the cost to the taxpayer is
> going up also. (Here I'm speaking of the cost to the taxpayer, which in
> a way, is the price the government charges for its services.) 

Is your "taxpayer" the student paying for college education, or is it the
general public paying for college funding through general taxes?

Gerhard

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