Professor asks Claude to price a bare-bones college: still $20,389 a year
_akpiper · x · 2026-11-13
In a Persuasion essay, scholar Andrew Piper asked Claude to cost out a stripped-down humanities college — no deans, no dorms, no library. Tuition still came to $20,389/year before accreditation, financial aid, or housing. His conclusion: education is simply expensive, and blaming administrative bloat doesn't fix it.
Key threads: US four-year degrees are trending toward half a million dollars; grassroots 'humanities institutes' like the Catherine Project teach 2,000 people/year via volunteers but can't scale to replace universities; Canada's cheaper system trades lower salaries, aging facilities, and bigger classes. Piper's thought experiment argues the fantasy of the no-cost college fails, so the case for universities must be made affirmatively.
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