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I have an eighteen year old son who will be starting college in September. He is a good student, but not good enough to qualify for the limited number of scholarships available. He wants to study engineering and has a great math background.
When I attended college here from 1977 to 1981, tuition averaged about $400 a semester. Today, it is now $3000 per semester. This represents a 750% increase that is about 3 X higher than the overall rate of inflation. Many do not know that college tuition actually is increasing faster than healthcare expenditures are.
I am simply disgusted by college tuition increases. Overall prices in America declined last year because we are in a recession. Yet, the tuition at our colleges and universities in this state was increased by 10%. If this was an unusual year, I might still be ok with it. The reality is that tuition increases here have gone up by approximately between 7-10% every year for as long as I can remember.
I want an explanation for why tuition is so out-of-hand. I realize colleges need money to build new buildings, install computers, and meet salary needs. Nonetheless, this is simply not justifiable. Its way out of hand.
We parents need to stop acting like a bunch of sheep and start rebelling. We need to write our legislators and the board of regents and tell them to limit these increases to the rate of inflation. Another approach might be to get our Congressmen to make a rule denying student loans to institutions that increase their tuition beyond a certain rate every year. Something desperately needs to be done before the poor and middle class are totally priced out of the higher education market.
1. Why weren't you saving for college earlier? $3000 a semester is nothing.
2. The elite schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc) meet 100% of demonstrated financial aid.
3. If you limit tuition increases across the board, who will pay the salaries of the professors?
Send your kids to a work college, a small, niche market of schools in various types of settings that are tuition-free. There aren't many, but there are a handful of colleges exist in a consortium in the U.S. that, rather than charging a traditional tuition, instead work out a program of mandatory work study that's granted independent of financial need in exchange for attending. Many are specialized, focusing on things like engineering, music, agriculture, etc. At these schools, room and board would be the only cost, and those are also costs that could be defrayed.
1. Why weren't you saving for college earlier? $3000 a semester is nothing.
2. The elite schools (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc) meet 100% of demonstrated financial aid.
3. If you limit tuition increases across the board, who will pay the salaries of the professors?
1. I have saved. We have enough money to send my son to college. That's beside the point. The point isn't how much we have. Its how much it *ought* to cost to educate one young person at a state-supported university. If a 750% increase in tuition over 30 years doesn't upset you, I wonder if there is any price increase anywhere you would consider unjustified.
2. My son isn't going to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Nor are over 99.5% of all college-bound high school graduates. I don't understand your point here at all. Is it that if he were a really, really top student he'd get all his expenses paid for? Sorry, 90% of the students don't fit into that category.
3. I have a sister who is a college professor. College professor salaries are a small part of the overall problem. I would argue that there are other economies that need to be achieved at a college. There are simply too many administrators earning $200,000 + at the average school. We need to look hard at building expenditures and other "big ticket" items.
On another note, I appreciate the comments made about cell phones and the amounts students spend on them. My son's cell phone costs us about $60 a month. This is $720 a year, it is not an insignificant expense, but pales next to $6000 a year for tuition.
Berea College, a liberal arts college in Kentucky, is one of the most well-known of the work colleges, because it was established initially by abolitionists as the first co-ed, non-segregated college in the South, founded pre-Civil War. All students get full-tuition scholarships, and many have room and board greatly defrayed as well. I considered attending, but ended up getting free tuition from another school closer to home.
Blackburn College, in my home state of IL (not my alma mater, however) is another work college.
According to Wikipedia, the consortium of work colleges in the U.S. includes, in addition to those two, Alice Lloyd in Kentucky, Missouri's College of the Ozarks, the tiny, highly selective, and all-male Deep Springs College in California (noted as as associate member of the consortium, not a full one, apparently), Ecclesia College in Arkansas, Sterling College in Vermont, and Warren Wilson in Asheville, North Carolina. I know more about the Berea because I researched it as an option when I was college age, so I can't speak as much to the setup at other schools, but the concept of a work college that's free to attend apart from one's labor always stuck out in my mind. Most appear to emphasize service and leadership in a pretty hands-on way, which also always appealed to me.
This type of setup isn't for everyone, but it's just an example of one way around playing into the exorbitant tuition situation. There are educational options that aren't the typical, cookie cutter thing, and for some people, they may be the better options.
Keeping tuition low only shifts more of the burden to the state's taxpayers.
Colleges COULD cut their costs of doing business. K-12 is cutting costs in some places. Professors COULD take pay cuts. They could replace professors with part-time TAs to save money. The college president COULD take a pay cut. The president at the college where I graduate makes more money than the President Obama. It was recently advertised that the college president was getting a raise. Colleges could put off building new buildings until they can get the buildings funded. Colleges could cut funding to departments with very small enrollment.
I would imagine that even in this recession, big universities have bloated profits.
Because back then, state government actually adequately funded higher education instead of shifting the majority of the burden to the families of attending students. Whenever this topic comes up, here's my 'favorite' quote on the matter:
And don't you understand, OP, that if the state or federal government did that, people would shriek "Socialism"? Again?
Look at it this way, particularly if your political views lean right: It's the free market at work, less hampered by interference from state or federal government. It's what the market will bear.
Much of it is driven by student that really shouldn't be going to college. With the numbers going up all the time the colege needs to look for funding somewhere else than the state taxpayers per student and they do. Also many colleges have losss alot of their other past funding.Then of sourse the same thing happens as in hoapitals;'it takes alot more investment in facities and eauipement to be at the top.
And don't you understand, OP, that if the state or federal government did that, people would shriek "Socialism"? Again?
Look at it this way, particularly if your political views lean right: It's the free market at work, less hampered by interference from state or federal government. It's what the market will bear.
I really could care less whether people shriek socialism or not. This is off-topic, but it would really be nice if some of these rightwingers who are constantly yelling "socialism" would actually define the term for once. Saying something is "socialistic" is not an argument. Coming up with solid facts why something won't work is an argument.
I see things this way: I've paid taxes in the state I live for literally decades. I don't abuse the system. I have exactly two kids. The schools my son wants to attend are all state run institutions. They aren't private. If they were private, than I suppose those institutions would have a right to charge any amount of tuition that they chose.
Because these schools are not private, as a citizen and a taxpayer, I have every right in the world to insist they keep tuition within some reasonable boundary. The highest paid state official where I live is the president of the leading state-run university here. That gives you an idea how much money educational administrators earn here.
Perhaps, $3000 per semester is a low amount of tuition compared to some state colleges and universities. It doesn't change the fact that problem of rapidly increasing tuition is starting to prevent the poor and middle class from going to school everywhere.
I am honestly surprised how little support my suggestion seems to be getting here. Maybe some believe education is optional and should only be given to a wealthy privileged elite.
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It was recently advertised that the college president was getting a raise.
Colleges could put off building new buildings until they can get the buildings funded. Colleges could cut funding to departments with very small enrollment. 
