Don't many of them actually teach (for bargain-basement wages)? At least, most of my friends who went to grad school had to teach undergrads at some point.

There's probably some artificial barriers to entry for education as well - it's hard to explain how Ph.Ds have no job prospects at the same time that college tuition keeps on rising. And I suspect that has to do with college's role as a signaling device for job prospects. If a bunch of Ph.Ds wanted to open a new college where they personally tutor a bunch of incoming college freshmen for much less than college costs, those kids would probably get a better education than any of their college-bound peers, but they also wouldn't have a degree from any credible university or much in the way of job prospects.

...come to think of it, I wonder if colleges know that their primary value is as a signaling mechanism, and intentionally restrict the size of the incoming class to preserve that signal. In other words, they're aware that they don't actually add any educational value, they just ensure that they only admit students who would've succeeded anyway and then point to all their successful graduates.

> ...come to think of it, I wonder if colleges know that their primary value is as a signaling mechanism, and intentionally restrict the size of the incoming class to preserve that signal. In other words, they're aware that they don't actually add any educational value, they just ensure that they only admit students who would've succeeded anyway and then point to all their successful graduates.

I think what you're saying is that they don't add any additional educational value beyond what your hypothetical band of PhDs could. They do provide educational value and also the signalling, though perhaps they don't acknowledge the latter so much.

But at least with pre-university education, as far I've seen, the process you describe is what most private preschools, primary and secondary schools engage in: They can essentially select their student population for the children who are most prepared, either by means (== family support system) or by their natural abilities.

Even those private schools that have scholarship programs for underprivileged students only accept students who are exceptional and don't have serious social functioning issues.

These schools then point to the achievement of their students as an indication of their superior educational process (which in some cases might be true, due to just having more money to provide better educational services).

Public schools, by contrast, must accept students of all abilities, and thus look worse on paper, when they are often dealing with a much more diverse, and often more challenging set of student backgrounds.

Teaching is not the expensive part of University education.

Housing (which you have to procure from the University for at least two years), amenities, and administration, is.

You can provide a world-class education by having professors use a whiteboard to lecture to students in cargo containers, or prefabs, for a fraction of the price of a modern education. But then you don't get the 'college experience' of paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for living in a hotel, surrounded by underage boose, drugs, and parties.

So room and board often gets separated out from tuition and while significant, is not the larger part of what a student pays at a "four year campus" college or university. One can also typically map room and board to cost of living in the area and find that you are merely getting a bad deal in most cases, not an astronomically bad deal.

A lot of the costs go into intangibles, like my college had some pricey guest lecturer programs. It is true though that university overhead has been growing quite fast lately and a lot of money in the last decade has shifted to things that are decidedly unrelated to education (I mean, LSU has their own lazy river).

No signalling required here. A degree from a non-accredited institution might as well be toilet paper.