Everyone knows perfectly well that tuitions have outpaced inflation every year since Homer was a pup. Tuition sticker shock, that ineluctable annual rise in school costs, causes the nation sporadic fits of hand wringing, belt tightening, and taxpayer revolt. Most troubling of all, it has inspired an industry of policy wonks, efficiency experts, management consultants, and charlatans who feed off everyone's collective anxiety and uncertainty. William J. Baumol, an economist known for his concept of "Cost Disease Phenomena," states that the steep rise in the costs of the performing arts--the cost of producing a Broadway play, for example--led him to a theory about the "stagnant" nature of arts production, and to a broader observation about the "handicraft" nature of production in the service industries. Baumol , using the examples of Thoreau's father's pencil factory and a string quartet performance, explains why the increase in the cost of "services" consistently outpaces the increase for "commodities." Comparing the art with which skilled teachers guide conversations in a serious classroom to the way a skilled quartet teaches itself the music as it plays for its audience, Baumol reminds educators that quality in education is more important than business-model reforms for more efficient schools. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan used Baumol's concept to explain the rising costs of government and the attendant recurrent charges of government inefficiency. Because costs of services deemed essential continue to rise, citizens, tired of meeting these rising costs, push them on to government.