[Excerpt] A variety of factors are responsible for the rapidly escalating costs of undergraduate education in the United States. Concern about quality — of students, faculty, course offerings, physical plant, and image — militates against a focus on efficiency and productivity at the selective private colleges and universities; a perception among students and families that price signals quality gives the less selective privates cover to keep raising rates. Public colleges and universities, where relatively higher increases have been recorded, continue to grapple with diminishing state appropriations as a share of their budgets.