This indicates that education is an arms race, built around signalling relative qualities, not a human capital building exercise centred on the pursuit of knowledge and skills.  If it were about gaining knowledge and understanding, your relative level of credentialing, and the selectivity of the institution would be almost irrelevant to employers.  If education is an arms race, subsidizing it will only cause people to spend more time in school, studying to beat the competition.<p>We should also forget that this arms race is very costly regardless of tuition prices, as most of the cost of education (to the average post-secondary student) is not tuition, but lost wages.