ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on students and their families as consumers. Students' keen awareness about what they perceive to be the costs and benefits of colleges has prompted American colleges and universities to be perpetually vigilant about tuition charges and balanced budgets, while at the same time making certain to provide programs and features that college officials think will be attractive. These simultaneous demands have created an institutional behavior animated by the realization that each college has to compete vigorously to enroll students. College and university presidents responded to criticisms about the rate of tuition increases by noting that the conventional inflationary measure – the consumer price index (CPI) – was inappropriate because it was tilted toward certain kinds of daily and weekly purchases. As such, it was a poor choice by which to track changes in a major once-in-a-lifetime cost. The resolution was the creation of a new inflationary measure – the higher education price index (HEPI).
