Do we need a czar for college tuition?

Time Magazine ^ | 11/4/2009

[SeekAndFind]

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports* that $50,000 is quickly becoming the typical cost for a year at one of the nation's elite colleges:

Fifty-eight private colleges now charge at least that much for tuition, fees, room, and board, a Chronicle analysis of College Board data shows. Last year only five colleges did.

Talk about sticker shock. Could it be time for Kenneth Feinberg to decide how much colleges are allowed to charge?

Members of what the Chronicle dubs the "$50K Club" include Sarah Lawrence ($55,788), Georgetown ($52,161), NYU ($51,993), Johns Hopkins ($51,690), Columbia ($51,544), Wesleyan ($51,432), Washington University in St. Louis ($51,329), Bates ($51,300), Vanderbilt ($51,228), Tufts ($51,088), University of Chicago ($51,078), Claremont McKenna ($51,035) and the University of Southern California ($50,732). Some universities you might expect to make the list—Harvard, Princeton, Stanford—don't.

Now, there are some caveats, including the fact that sticker price can be quite different from what a family winds up paying:

Many students receive need-based grants—often from the colleges themselves—or merit-based scholarships and other discounts... The Chronicle analyzed College Board data to calculate the average grant offered in 2008-9 by 42 colleges whose list price for tuition, fees, room, and board was more than $50,000 this year... Among the 42, the average grant per full-time student was just over $13,000. That means that the average bill last year for tuition, fees, room, and board, after grants, was about $36,000.

Although if what colleges are doing is jacking up the price and then jacking it back down for families who can't afford it, what we're left with is a tax on the rich—or on people who scrimped and saved every penny for 18 years in order to be prepared for this day. You decide if that's something you want colleges to do.

[randomhero97]

Yes, why not have a urinal czar as well?

[goodnesswins]

I don’t think it’s worth it.....

[FlyingEagle]

Absolutely - any extra Marxists laying around, somehow missed the obamba gravy train?

[Iron Munro]

Government money pouring into health care distorted the marketplace and caused fees and charges to skyrocket to the point a working family without insurance can’t even afford the costs of having a baby.

Government money pouring into colleges as part of socialist wealth redistribution has been doing the same thing and it is getting ready to explode with Obama’s initiatives.

I struggled through school on the old GI bill that paid for just a fraction of what it cost, while illiterate children of moochers and parasites sitting next to me were getting a totally free ride.

[paul51]

why would we need a czar for anything?

[beethovenfan]

We don’ need no steeenking “czars”.

[gidget7]

Good Lord NO. The control freaks in WA have all but destroyed the chances of anyone but their chosen people, to go to college.

[A message]

And a czar in charge of the proper use of toilet paper.....

[genghis]

well i have never heard a congressman make so much sense.

[milemark]

We need a czar for everything. A coffee czar, a beer czar, a burger czar, a football czar, a pothole czar, a t-shirt czar, a trashcan czar, a hat czar, a shoe czar...

Just think, we can all be a czar of something! Dibs on pizza czar.

[rdb3]

We need a czar for everything. A coffee czar, a beer czar, a burger czar, a football czar, a pothole czar, a t-shirt czar, a trashcan czar, a hat czar, a shoe czar...

Yeah, for the NFL! That's the only way the Browns will win the Super Bowl. Or not.