Giving Compass' Take:

• Amanda Ripley examines data from the 2018 Education at a Glance report and finds that the price of a college degree in the U.S. is so high, especially compared to the rest of the world.

• What can nonprofits and other organizations do to reduce the costs of higher education? Are more scholarships the answer, or should the focus be on the root causes?

• Learn why work colleges could become a low-cost, high-value model for the future.

Before the automobile, before the Statue of Liberty, before the vast majority of contemporary colleges existed, the rising cost of higher education was shocking the American conscience: “Gentlemen have to pay for their sons in one year more than they spent themselves in the whole four years of their course,” The New York Times lamented in 1875.

Decadence was to blame, the writer argued: fancy student apartments, expensive meals, and “the mania for athletic sports.”

Today, the U.S. spends more on college than almost any other country, according to the 2018 Education at a Glance report, released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

All told, including the contributions of individual families and the government (in the form of student loans, grants, and other assistance), Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year — nearly twice as much as the average developed country.

... The data suggest a bigger problem than fancy room and board. Even if we were to zero out all these ancillary services tomorrow, the U.S. would still spend more per college student than any other country (except Luxembourg). It turns out that the vast majority of American college spending goes to routine educational operations — like paying staff and faculty — not to dining halls. These costs add up to about $23,000 per student a year — more than twice what Finland, Sweden, or Germany spends on core services.

Read the full article about why college is so expensive in the U.S. by Amanda Ripley at The Atlantic.