Planet Money

Podbit · Planet Money

Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?

Explore episode Jul 1, 2026

Where this was said

The Counter-Evidence: No Bennett Effect in Law or Medicine

At 20:07 · chapter starts 18:50

Where Denning found evidence of the Bennett Hypothesis, Robert Kelchen at the University of Tennessee found something quite different. His research focused not on a single state but on specific fields of study — business, medicine, and law — across the whole country. And his conclusion was that there was no evidence of a direct link between federal loan levels and tuition increases in those fields. The reason, he argues, is that the Bennett Hypothesis rests on an assumption that graduate programs are profit centers ripe for price-gouging. But many aren't. Medical schools, for instance, can cost institutions up to $1 million in resources per degree produced. Schools operating on thin margins can't simply slash prices in response to loan caps — the underlying costs are real. Kelchen does allow that for-profit colleges show some evidence of the hypothesis, suggesting the effect is sector-specific rather than universal.

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