Why do top-ranked undergraduate universities not charge significantly more for tuition than many lower-ranked institutions? For example, in 2017, full tuition at Princeton (#1 nationally in the 2016 U.S. News rankings) was $45,320. The University of the Pacific (#111) was $44,588. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (#30) charged out-of-state students $33,916 for full tuition and the University of South Carolina (#107) charged out-of-state students $31,282.

Use the topic of "Elasticities" to aid in explanation.

This is the elasticities basic definition:

Elasticities are a measure of how response consumers or producers are to "economic shocks" (loosely defined). We know that anything that impacts consumers in a market will also impact producers and vice versa. Elasticities give us a framework for thinking about how shocks will differentially impact both sides of the market. For example, we might expect for a cigarette tax placed on producers to have a larger impact on consumers (even though producers ultimately have to pay the tax to the government).