Collusion?

[jimbogumbo]

Pretty sure they can't agree: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/10/11/lawsuit-accuses-40-colleges-pricing-conspiracy

[kaysixteen]

Hmmmm.. back in the day (class of '89), Dear Alma Mater required my mom *every single year* to get a letter from an authorized person (clergy, social worker, govt employee, maybe some others) verifying that my father, who had disappeared from our lives and knowledge of his whereabouts, since 1977, was in fact gone and not contributing.   I am thus very sympathetic to the situation of any student in a similar situation whose school presumably would offer no such options, and downgrade financial aid package on assumption that the deadbeat dad could in fact be made to pony up tuition contribution.

[dismalist]

Pretty sure they can't agree: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/10/11/lawsuit-accuses-40-colleges-pricing-conspiracy

It's hard to swallow that 40 firms can stably collude. The benefits to cheating would normally be high, so that the cartel would fall apart. But in this case there are so many more firms in the competitive fringe that the cartel markup could not have been very high in the first place, so no great benefits accrue to cheating on the cartel. However, with the College Board as cartel manager, it just might work! :-)

[spork]

[...]

with the College Board as cartel manager, it just might work! :-)

The NCAA had a pretty good run.

[dismalist]

[...]

with the College Board as cartel manager, it just might work! :-)

The NCAA had a pretty good run.

The NCAA indeed had real money at stake. So, colleges could have been expected to defect -- to cheat.

I think the difficulty in cheating on the NCAA was that a team cannot exist in isolation. It needs other teams to play against. So, there's a very clear punishment strategy: I won't play against you if you're not a well behaved cartel member! It's not in my interests to cheat. To effectively cheat, you need to organize a whole league. That's hard.

That's why it took anti-trust law to break the cartel.

[Hibush]

[...]

with the College Board as cartel manager, it just might work! :-)

The NCAA had a pretty good run.

The NCAA indeed had real money at stake. So, colleges could have been expected to defect -- to cheat.

I think the difficulty in cheating on the NCAA was that a team cannot exist in isolation. It needs other teams to play against. So, there's a very clear punishment strategy: I won't play against you if you're not a well behaved cartel member! It's not in my interests to cheat. To effectively cheat, you need to organize a whole league. That's hard.

That's why it took anti-trust law to break the cartel.

It seems as if the NIL rules have changed the makeup of the NCAA cartel, so that it includes only three sports leagues and only mens football and basketball. Did they collude to rid themselves of the low-revenue hangerson?

[dismalist]

[...]

with the College Board as cartel manager, it just might work! :-)

The NCAA had a pretty good run.

The NCAA indeed had real money at stake. So, colleges could have been expected to defect -- to cheat.

I think the difficulty in cheating on the NCAA was that a team cannot exist in isolation. It needs other teams to play against. So, there's a very clear punishment strategy: I won't play against you if you're not a well behaved cartel member! It's not in my interests to cheat. To effectively cheat, you need to organize a whole league. That's hard.

That's why it took anti-trust law to break the cartel.

It seems as if the NIL rules have changed the makeup of the NCAA cartel, so that it includes only three sports leagues and only mens football and basketball. Did they collude to rid themselves of the low-revenue hangerson?

The only thing I know about team sports is that they are played in teams. As for other sports, I have always warned against them. What I did suspect was that for colleges and the NCAA this is a multi-billion dollar business.

So I skimmed the Wikipedia article on the NCAA. Best I can make out, though it is nowhere written, is that how they slice and dice things is price discrimination, 'ya know have equal teams play against each other. That's more interesting and one can charge more for that. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just a question of who gets the cash.

I don't see that many sports are excluded from the NCAA, but I might have missed that. Who is included does come down to interest and hence money of course.