Thanks to @General_Effort@lemmy.world for the links!
Here’s a link to Caltech’s press release: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior
Here’s a link to the actual paper (paywall): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(24)00808-0
Here’s a link to a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.10234
The educational system isn’t setting the prices. The publishers are separate private enterprises which are mostly profit-driven.
In the last 20 years, “open access” journals have been created where the author (author’s grant money, mostly from the government) pays the charges instead of the readers. That has led to a whole slew of other problems including predatory and phony journals springing up.
author’s grant money, mostly from the government, paid for by tax dollars, by US citizens, as part of taxes attributed to education and healthcare. yaaaaaaaawn.