# An op-ed by Research Scholar Robert Frank cited Prof. William Baumol's Cost Disease

1 Faculty News March 10, 2012 ![The New York Times Logo](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/uat_027320.jpg?itok=W8xBr66g)>

Excerpt from [The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are-rising-amid-a-prestige-chase.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss) -- "Some of that \[higher education tuition\] growth has resulted from a phenomenon called Baumol’s disease, after the economist [William J. Baumol](http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/william-baumol), who described it in a 1965 article he wrote with William G. Bowen. The basic idea is that while productivity gains have made it possible to assemble cars with only a tiny fraction of the labor that was once required, it still takes four musicians nine minutes to perform Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, just as it did in the 19th century."

[Read more](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/business/college-costs-are-rising-amid-a-prestige-chase.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss)