Colleges Invented the Price Crisis and Now Want Credit for the Band-Aid

By Barb McGowan · 2026-09-25

Declared advocacy, not analysis

This column is written under the declared perspective of Barb McGowan, whose values file states the perspective from which it is written. Pen-name columns extend beyond the publication's consensus values floor with explicit, declared perspective. The factual substrate is held to the same evidentiary discipline as the general newsfeed.

Editorial cartoon by Barb McGowan: Colleges Invented the Price Crisis and Now Want Credit for the Band-Aid

After decades of running the high-price, high-discount shell game, private colleges are calling a sticker-price reset a 'sea change' while the scam stays intact.

I did everything they told us to do. Get good grades. Apply for aid. Take the loans, because college is an investment. It pays for itself.

Thirty years of that advice, and here’s what it actually meant: the colleges jacked their sticker prices into the stratosphere so they could hand out “merit scholarships” and look generous. At Coe College in Iowa, not a single student was paying full price before this “revolutionary” reset. Not one. Average aid was forty thousand dollars a student. That’s not affordability. That’s a car dealership writing a fake MSRP so they can pretend to give you a deal.

And now — now — after decades of this shit, they want credit for being honest? Carroll College is cutting tuition 40% and their own president calls the new price “closer to reality.” Closer to reality! That means the old price was a goddamn lie, and every family that looked at it and walked away was making the rational choice. They were “self-selecting out,” the article says. No shit they were self-selecting out. The number was designed to scare the people who couldn’t afford it while letting the financial-aid office play Santa Claus with the ones who stuck around.

Don’t let these wingnuts rebrand a broken machine as a sea change. The same schools that inflated the price to look prestigious are now cutting it to stop losing enrollment. That’s not a moral awakening. That’s a marketing pivot. The families drowning in student debt didn’t need a new sticker price. They needed the whole goddamn racket called what it was — a three-decade hustle where the institution got the prestige and the kid got the bill.

Take the “transparency” sign down until you’re ready to be transparent about who built the maze in the first place.

Source story: Private colleges cut tuition and drop loans to draw wary families.

About Barb McGowan

Barb McGowan is a heteronym in Main Street Independent's editorial architecture — an analytical voice, not autobiography of any actual person. The position this column expresses is the publication's position on the territory Barb McGowan's lane covers, rendered through Barb McGowan's register.

About Barb McGowan · How the pen names work

Column metadata

Published: 2026-09-25
Pen name: Barb McGowan
Topic tags: education
Primary entities: Carroll College, Coe College, Carleton College, Marist University, Union College, Cornell University, The Wall Street Journal
Themes: higher education affordability, private college pricing, student loans, financial aid
Floor values engaged: human_life_and_dignity, Accountability of power, Equality & fairness