Campus Connection: A bachelor's degree for $10,000? - Todd Finklemeyer, Cap Times

These inexpensive degrees would be targeted at non-traditional students -- perhaps a stay-at-home parent or a middle-aged worker looking for a new career. They wouldn't replace existing areas of study, but would expand options. Noel Radomski, the director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, a higher ed think tank on the UW-Madison campus, says low-cost options for students are nothing new. "This is a cyclical idea," he says. ‘Whenever there is a recession or state cutbacks, these ideas float up. It's a fad." Part of the reason they tend to come up, he adds, is that it's not always apparent that college officials take "the arms race of tuition" seriously. "We need to have serious discussions about the dreaded ‘P' word on campus -- productivity," Radomski says. "We need to examine if our faculty are teaching enough. We need to look at our array of degree programs and whether some can be cut. So we don't address these escalating costs as well as we could."