摘要：William G Bowen first coined the phrase "cost disease in education" in the 1960's [1]. He demonstrated that the rise in the institutional cost per student in higher education throughout the twentieth century was at a rate that was higher than that of general costs [1]. Numerous other researchers have replicated his findings and indeed shown that the above-inflation rate of rise has continued [2]. What is most striking about the statistics is that the rise is related to the institutional cost per student. If university costs were increasing but the universities were producing more graduates, then the paying public might well still feel satisfied. However the fact that it is a cost per student suggests that something has been going wrong. Some have surmised as a result that education and more specifically medical education may be cost inefficient [3]. If this is the case, then it is also worth surmising what if anything can we do about it
