In an information industry the cost of monopoly must not be measured in dollars alone, but also in its effect on the economy of ideas and images, the restraint of which can ultimately amount to censorship.
Most things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem because the information we’re exposed to tends to be a highlight reel of what people want you to know about themselves to increase their own chances of success. It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.
But the college bundle has always more than the sum of its individual parts. In COVID era, colleges are forced to unbundle, so now college is competing with other unbundled alternatives.