Let me give readers a flavor for how these tuition dollars are spent. It’s a flavor addition by omission if you will. For example, I teach about 600 students per year in my classes. Folks probably think I am overworked in my teaching load, and maybe that’s true in some relative sense, but to be quite honest I could teach one more full blown class with no problem, and probably several more. Indeed, I’ve offered to do so in the past and have been politely turned down (even when I offer to do it for no money cost, but that’s another story for another time). For arguments’ sake, suppose the “all-in” cost to have me teaching, including the indirect costs associated with my use of the library, office space, the direct and indirect cost of benefits, salary and a whole lot more, are somehow up at $150,000 per year. At $46,000, spread across 8 classes a year, a typical “full-pay” student pays $5,750 per class. So, it would take me only 26 student-classes to fully cover the costs of having me teach here at the University. This means that the tuition revenues generated by the other 574 students goes elsewhere. I will not here elaborate on the elsewhere, I just want you to focus on: 96% of the tuition dollars that “I generate” go somewhere other than me (which is fine by me by the way, I happily signed my current contract) – so in a universe filled with people claiming that labor markets are really exploitive, then it’s a bit striking that so much of “my” surplus is extracted each and every year. I bet that this is “worse” than even the most “extractive” Walmart and its “ilk” do. Again, we can lecture you on wage determination and exploitation at some other point. Another point is that despite this, tuition fees still increase, despite the fact that folks like me can both teach more, and given results like the paper above – that we can deliver our teaching in far more cost-effective ways than we currently do.