The Cost of a College Education is Growing

             This is my first year attending a postsecondary education institution. I started a little later in life than most of those who begin their college careers. For me, this meant assessing the whole situation from academic, as well as economic standpoints. Thus not only choosing a degree, but exploring how to pay for it. This is where I stumbled upon a frightening realization: the cost of higher education in the United States is rising with no end in sight.

            I know that most people realize that the cost of just about everything goes up every year. The cost of gasoline (for example) was about eighty cents per gallon when I started driving years ago. So yes, inflation is a constant in the world of economics, and currently our inflation rate in the United States is around four percent each year. So, what is the cost of a college education today?

            According to The College Board, a not-for-profit academic organization, the average cost to attend a public 2-year college is $2,544 per academic year (2009-10 College Prices). This is up over seven percent from just last year alone. The average for a public 4-year school is $7,020, up 6.5%. And to attend a private 4-year university is up 4.4% to $26,273. Just looking at the inflation of tuition from one year to the next is startling when you calculate the projected costs. For example, using the same increased percentage for a public 4-year college (6.5%), in just ten short years the cost breaches over thirteen thousand dollars per academic year. That’s almost double the amount in a decade. When the tuition increase is greater than the rate of inflation (by almost double in some cases), what are the possible problems America might face if most of its citizens can’t afford to attend college?

            To start, let’s realize that a household run by college-educated individuals will on average earn over 1.5 million dollars more over their entire career than those with only a high school diploma (Hansen). That spells out simple economics; they are clearly stronger candidates as consumers, thus keeping our capitalist society running strong. So it’s easy to see that education isn’t only essential for personal enrichment on a variety of levels, it’s also vital to our economy. And with our world becoming ever more interconnected, these implications become global. With the cost of tuition slowly becoming out of reach for many low-income and middle-class households, we might understand how it can be cause for an economic shutdown for our children and beyond. My goal was to figure out some reasons for the consistent hike in tuition.

              One probably more recognized reason for tuition hikes involve state funding. State funding plays a huge role in helping to maintain our educational infrastructure for not-for-profit universities and colleges. A state-wide budget cut in education across the board ultimately creates higher costs for a student to attend college. An excerpt from the Your Money section of The New York Times shared why else college tuition continues to rise, even in a down economy. “In some ways, higher education is more like a political environment (rather) than the management of a private corporation,” Mr. Weiss said. Except that thanks to tenure, it is difficult to vote anyone out of office. Still, he added, “Alienating some of your faculty members, if you can avoid it, is something you shouldn’t be doing” (Leiber). This basically means that tenured faculty is in a way grandfathered into the payroll. Not only are faculty protected almost without regard to whether or not their curriculum is important to the global stage awaiting our future leaders, but there are other costs that are frivolous as a result. “Fine arts has studio-based production, so capital and facility costs are high,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of the nonprofit group Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability, speaking of colleges in general. “Piano tutoring is pretty much one to one in a room with a piano. Pianos are expensive. Agriculture is expensive because of the lab costs, which means a barn” (Lieber).  I’m not at all suggesting that there is one or only a few simple ways to untangle something that is literally decades in the making, but what are some little things that we might do to help shore up a potentially serious problem?    

             One suggestion I might make is that the professors which on average “teach five classes a year over two semesters and work with students on their independent research projects”—Lieber, teach one extra class and maybe less research. It shouldn’t be too much to ask considering there being a boom in people registering for college due to current economic downturn. Another might be stepping into the twenty first century and adopting more on-line availability for basic courses which would reduce the need for the brick and mortar, as well as allow more students to select that course for the semester. This isn’t a crazy idea either; some schools are already implementing them, like The Art Institutes of America, for example. What’s that? “Not everyone has access to the internet”, you say?  Well, I’d understand that not everyone would want to go through their class online, and this would be an option ultimately. But I’d bet they might afford the means via the decrease in tuition costs should they be interested.

                 Though it’s not clear exactly how to remedy this very important issue, the fact that it requires focused attention is. As the rich become richer, the poor become poorer and the middle-class is slowly disappearing, we better do something. Otherwise, like the great Roman Empire, our storied civilization will eventually fall.

Works Cited

Hansen, Katherine. What Good is a College Education Anyway? quintcareers.com.

      EmpoweringSites.com. 21 Nov. 2009 <http://www.quintcareers.com/college_

      education_value.html>

Lieber, Ron. Why College Costs Rise, Even in a Recession. nytimes.com. 4 Sept.

      2009. The New York Times. 21 Nov. 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09

      /05/you-money/paying-for-college/05money.html>

2009-10 College Prices: Keep Increases in Perspective. collegeboard.com. The College

       Board. 11 Nov. 2009 <http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494

      .html>