The Globe’s Diti Kohli makes a valiant effort to explain why absurdly high college tuition prices aren’t really what they seem. A lot the explanations make sense. But in an Alice in Wonderland type of way. … The story is about how tuition sticker prices are often offset by financial aid, discounts, scholarships, government funding, private donors, etc. Tuition prices are sort of real and not-real numbers, something to be believed and not believed, a fact that’s not a fact. …  From Alice: “Well, I can’t put it any more clearly, sir, for it isn’t clear to me.”

Btw: the health-care industry and the Pentagon exist in the same surreal accounting universe where “nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t.” … It’s ultimately tied to their non-profit status and wide-open government funding spigots that turn real money into funny money. But that’s a subject for another post.