The Nearly-Free University model would revolutionize higher education, enabling a universally accessible college education at a very low cost.
The key to understanding higher education in the U.S. is to grasp that it is at heart just another debt-dependent neofeudal cartel. In other words, it is just like sickcare and the national defense complex.
Each cartel shares these features:
1. Compelling PR "cover" for cartel extraction of wealth. "Healthcare" (i.e. sickcare that profits from illness, not health) is a "right." The defense industry is the bulwark of democracy, and "educating our children" is the key to future prosperity. Each portrays itself as sacrosanct.
These "Mom and apple pie" cover stories enable monopolistic exploitation: $300 million a piece fighter aircraft (replacing $54 million aircraft), $150,000 college diplomas, and "healthcare" spending that is two times more per capita than competing advanced democracies.
2. Government (monopoly) protection and funding. The largest monopoly is of course the Central State, which holds a monopoly on taxation, coercion and distribution of swag. All these cartels have gained control of Federal (monopoly) funding.
3. Illusory competition. Each cartel is protected by wide, deep regulatory moats and complexity fortresses that protect the Status Quo income streams from any real competition or innovation. Within each cartel, meaningless variations in price are offered as "proof of competition," but everyone knows the price of each cartel's "product" ratchets higher, regardless of conditions in the real economy.
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