Increasingly, civic and business leaders are alternately helping and compelling higher education to up its game. For example, churches and other organizations in Greensboro, North Carolina, are driving young people to enroll in and older adults to return to college by providing not only inspiration but also such practical support as day care and money for books and unanticipated costs.

More than 2,700 volunteers are helping high school students apply to college in Tennessee as part of tnAchieves, and 242 unpaid coaches are doing the same thing through ScholarMatch, a San Francisco-based nonprofit founded by author Dave Eggers.

For decades, higher education has come under public scrutiny for rising costs. But there is at least one other sector that seems to feel even more heat from policymakers and ire from the public. That sector is health care. 

Peter Ubel, a physician who is a professor in Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, has written a book about the economics of health care—and he thinks there may be a few lessons for higher education in there as well.