Everyone knows college is becoming more and more expensive. Colleges have not been able to control their spending. Find out why in a new article by A. Barton Hinkle of Reason.

How Financial Aid Drives Up the Cost of College

Meanwhile, administrative costs have skyrocketed; the growth in support personnel has far outstripped the growth in instructional staff. Some of that is due to the natural bureaucratic tendency toward bloat. Some of it is owing to the universities’ ideological devotion to identity politics and their attempts to appease the grievance industry by creating new offices and departments.

As a result, many colleges and universities now resemble the University of Virginia—which has a six-person Office for Diversity and Equity, a six-person Office of African-American Affairs, a Center for Diversity in Engineering, an Office of Graduate Student Diversity Programs, an associate dean of diversity for the medical school (not to mention a director of diversity initiatives for the same medical school), a program coordinator for Asian/Asian Pacific American programs, a program coordinator for Hispanic/Latino, Native American, and Middle Eastern Student Services (“Office Hours: 2-3 pm Tues, Wed”), a coordinator for LGBTQ student services, and so on. Kindly note that these offices do not exist to prevent discrimination in higher education—multiple federal laws, enforced by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, already do that.

Trying to address spiraling college costs by increasing student aid is like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline. The way to cut the cost of college is to cut college spending—by making colleges trim their administrative fat, require more work from their personnel and close those offices and departments—including a majority of money-sucking athletic programs—that do not pull their own weight.