USA Today has some hits and some misses in its editorial on the soaring costs of college. As it points out, there's an arms race of facilities, with students wowed by impressive student life centers. And there's a lot of money spent on research (sometimes of dubious quality) that might be spent on teaching.

Yet other factors aren't mentioned in the editorial, such as the fact that the largest universities get direct taxpayer subsidies from legislatures, sheltering the market discipline that might keep costs under control.