Posted on 07/21/2014 9:21:07 AM PDT by Academiadotorg
Any sanguine prognosticators who may have predicted a decline in the average cost of attending college may need to rethink how they arrived at such an off-the mark conclusion. college grad hire me
At least 50 American colleges and universities are now charging students more than $60,000 per year. This marks a significant increase from last year when only nine schools exceeded the 60K mark.
What’s shocking about this year’s figures is that the data presented in the story from Business Insider does “not reveal the true financial burden of higher education.” Other fees not included in the story include costs for textbooks, travel fees, and social expenses.
Increases in total college expenses are nothing new to those who have remained vigilant about rising collegiate costs. Yet, the seemingly inexorable spike in the cost of a college education has assumed a distinct personality of its own. To many, university rates have gone up in a fashion unmatched by most other industries.
What began originally as a modest effort to help ease the financial burden of war veterans with the GI Bill of Rights (1944) has evolved into a modern, nationwide effort that includes massive lending programs conducted at the national and state levels to help Americans foot rising tuition bills.
The unexpected success of the GI Bill spurred the thinking that perhaps the federal government could subsidize college expenses for civilians. It did so with the national Defense Student Loan Program, later renamed the Federal Perkins Loan Program.
Despite the good intentions of these lending policies which may have succeeded initially, they have come to actually accelerate the rise in tuition and the student debt load as well as the overall financial instability of the nation as a whole.
And yet, convention still mandates that those who want to maximize their earning potential and job prospects (particularly in a sluggish economy) should graduate from a four-year college.
Ostensibly, the increase in college applicants might indicate more of a desire to learn and participate in a robust intellectual community. However, such an idealized view of motives might be optimistic when one takes into account that what is probably fueling the surge of students is that higher education may be their only option to help ensure a secure financial future.
The natural response to more demand for college education is a rise in tuition rates. Schools could theoretically increase the supply of educational options by accepting more students in lieu of higher costs, but this would likely yield insufficient returns and could be damaging to a school’s bottom line. One must take into account as well that colleges are physically limited as to how many students they can reasonably accommodate.
This demand for a college education may be consistent with more natural, uncontrollable processes, but what is most definitely within the powers of the Congress and the statehouses is lending practices.
Taxpayer-backed subsidies only exacerbate the situation. Loans may make college more affordable for some, thus increasing overall consumption of higher education. However, this leads to a higher demand, which in turn causes costs to climb. In actuality, loans do not lower costs, but end up making them higher.
And since colleges have no trouble filling their freshmen classes, they feel no pressure to cut costs. Notice that new academic building with fancy plasma screen televisions, that new student center, or new dorm?
Basically a silly requirement created explicitly for the purpose of forcing parents to cough up more money.
Evidently some parents had already figured out what was going to happen at "orientation", made sure not to have any documentation regarding their plans on hand, and answered every question in the affirmative so that they could forgo the additional fee.
My friend, on the other hand, had brought all of the paperwork as instructed and unintentionally ratted herself out.
“.....if he wants to go to a good university.”
“Good” can be achieved going to community college for the first couple of years and transitioning to a 4 year state institution.
Of course, that’s not everyone’s idea of “good”......
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How does Hillsdale rank along these lines?
As President of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels has held down operating costs producing a tuition freeze at PU for a third straight year...did it by turning the PU focus to adjusting their costs to the budgets of the students/parents, not the other way around.
This lesson that could be used by the GOP this Fall and in 2016. The message should be simple...we work for the American people not the other way around....to this end we pledge to reduce or eliminate the corrosive influence of unions, to eliminate unnecessary spending and headcount in every government agency, to privatize agencies better run by the private sector like the VA and Amtrak, and most importantly, to set clear spending and efficiency goals using real world business processes and hold agency management accountable...you miss the goals, you are gone!
Mitch Daniels did so many great things as Governor of Indiana by employing clear and simple business practices. The GOP would do well to follow his example!
I really need it to happen within the next 15 years.
My local community college is now a four year college, and one of my sons was among the first to get a bachelors there.
I don’t have to deal with tuition anymore...at least for a long time, but if I did, I would sue - based on colleges charging different people massively different prices, based on an arbitrary criteria that doesn’t exist anywhere else in this country, which is income.
Very well, we need more Hillsdales.
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