Can Colleges become more efficient?

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Public Agenda is "an innovative public opinion research and public engagement organization, works to strengthen our democracy's capacity to tackle tough public policy issues.": They want to "keep tuition down by making colleges more efficient."

Perspective in Belief: The reason so many families struggle to send their kids to college is simple: tuition keeps going up, outpacing both inflation and family income. Colleges have to take responsibility for prices that go up so far, so fast, and the best way to solve the problem is for colleges to become more efficient and competitive. Colleges need to make better use of new techniques like distance learning to reach more students at lower cost. For-profit educational institutions are experimenting with new ways of teaching and should be encouraged -- if nothing else, the competition will keep colleges sharp. We also need stronger accountability for public universities and community colleges. Unlike the K-12 education system, there aren't many yardsticks for measuring the quality of a college education and few ways of knowing whether taxpayers and students are getting what they pay for.