The Tuition Crisis
The days of paying for college with the money in your pocket are long gone. Some students reach up to “six figures in debt as a result to their four-year degree”. College Board reports, the national average of yearly tuition for a public two-year college is $3,440 for in-district students. A four-year university for in-state students is $9,410. For out-of-state students that number can reach up to $23,890. If car prices had gone up as fast as tuition has over the past three decades, the average price of a new car “would cost more than $80,000”. Blow is my tuition bill for the Summer 2017 semester totaling $1,066.00. With rollover money from my student loan I was able to pay for my Summer classes in full.
Community college is much more affordable than universities. Yet the general cost of tuition is turning hundreds of students away from pursuing a higher education. High School students are faced with the decision of going to college before they graduate. A decision that comes with a very expensive price-tag. Sometimes the benefits of a degree hide in the shadows of debt. Students that choose to go will be fighting an up-hill battle for the first few years of adulthood. Once a student graduates from college they are stuck making payments that can last up to 21 years instead of being able to buy a home or start a family.
The cost of college puts young Americans at a disadvantage compared to other students across the world. College graduates are better able to compete in the global economy than those without a degree. If employers can not find qualified workers within the United States they often search elsewhere, bringing in more qualified individuals from other countries.
So who’s to blame for the rise of tuition? Countries like France, Germany and Finland offer tuition-free education for four-year universities. What is stopping the US from moving forward in that direction? There are actually a few factors involving the rise of tuition.
States have shifted the funding of college onto students.
With the increasing number of enrollment, colleges need to raise the cost to match the new accommodation. The Center on Budget and Policy Priories, CBPP, reported that many of the states are still recovering from the recession of 2008. “States relied disproportionately on damaging cuts to deal with declining revenue over the course of the recession.” The CBPP continued to say that many states made up to 45 percent of the loss in revenue through reducing the support for public services, like investment in education. Meanwhile, enrollment in public colleges was up 8.6 percent.
Instead of making college more affordable, states have pulled funding by 18 percent per student. State and local tax revenue play a fundamental role in funding public two and four-year colleges. Public colleges rely heavily on state and local appropriations.
In 1988, public colleges and universities received 3.2 times as much revenue from state and local governments as they did from students. They now receive about 1.2 times as much from states and localities as from students. -CBPP
Over time, students have accumulated much greater responsibility for paying for public higher education. That’s because during and immediately following recessions, state and local funding for higher education has tended to fall, while tuition has tended to grow more quickly.- CBPP
The rise of tuition over the last few years would not be as problematic if incomes grew as well. The CBPP along with College Board and The United States Census Bureau explained in the 1970’s and mid 80’s, tuition and incomes for families grew together. The rise of tuition was not felt then, unlike now when the cost shift has “happened over a period when absorbing additional expenses has been difficult for many families because their incomes have been stagnant or declining.” It is ridiculous to think that the average family can keep up with the cost when tuition has outrun the median growth of income.
This graph shows how the income of median households is very disproportionate to the cost of tuition. Families find themselves trying to make ends meet to provide their children with an education that they deserve.
ATTN standing for Attention, which is an issues-driven driven media company, explains another major factor for the tuition increase. The college administration bloat has forced students to pay more for education across the states. College tuition has skyrocketed while their full-time faculty has barely increased. The increase in college tuition has not gone to the professors, but to administration. In short, students are paying way more for college now, “that is in no greater in value than the education that their parents or grandparents’ generation paid for.” This makes you question what are college students across the country really paying for.
This sudden increase in expensive administration can be detrimental because it makes it unrealistic to have tuition-free education in the first place. Colleges are able to raise the cost of tuition to make up for these extra costs. Inevitably putting it off on the students and forcing them to pay for it.
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