One year of in-state public college tuition expressed in ounces of gold, traced from 1970 to today. Unlike most goods, college tuition has gotten more expensive even in gold terms — a sharp counter-example to the broader pattern of stable or declining gold-denominated prices. The chart reveals that higher education is one of the very few categories where genuine real-cost inflation has occurred, separate from currency debasement.
Analyst's Note
College in gold has approximately tripled since 1970, while most other goods have held steady or declined in gold terms. The drivers are well-documented: federal student-loan availability, regulatory expansion, administrative bloat, and constrained supply (degree-granting institutions have not expanded proportionally to demand). For the analytical investor, the chart is a powerful conversation starter and an honest acknowledgment that not everything is currency-debasement. Some categories really are getting more expensive in real terms, and education is the canonical example. The chart is also a soft endorsement of the case against college as an investment for many students: paying three times more (in stable monetary terms) for the same product is a form of inflation that no productivity argument explains.