The Business of Higher Education Debt, Prestige, Tuition, and the Long Reckoning...A deep dive into the business of American higher education: why college became so expensive, how student debt helped finance the modern university, what students actually received for the rising price, and whether the labor market still delivers enough value to justify the cost. This episode follows the money from tuition and federal loans to campus expansion, graduate degrees, prestige competition, administrative growth, and borrower stress. The argument is not that college is worthless. It is that the old bargain — borrow now because education will pay later — has become far more complicated, uneven, and expensive than families were led to believe.