Is College Tuition Too High?

I'm disturbed by this. We've heard about the rising costs of college for years, but I didn't realize how much it's outpaced everything else. No wonder our students are starting their adult lives with huge debts that take them many years to pay off! According to an article in Salon.com,

"In the past several decades, the cost of higher education has climbed at an astounding pace -- faster than the Consumer Price Index, faster even than the cost of medical care. Over the past 30 years, the average annual cost of college tuition, fees, and room and board has increased nearly 100 percent, from $7,857 in 1977-78 to $15,665 in 2007-08 (in constant 2006-07 dollars). Median household income, on the other hand, has risen a mere 18 percent over that same period, from about $42,500 to just over $50,000. College costs, in other words, have gone up at more than five times the rate of income."

Another aspect of this situation that doesn't seem right is the distribution of financial aid grants, with more of the money going to higher-income students than to lower-income students.

"Engines of Inequality," a 2006 report by the Education Trust, a national education advocacy and policy organization, found that state flagship universities and a group of major research universities spent $257 million in 2003 on financial aid for students from families earning more than $100,000 a year. Those same universities spent only $171 million on aid to students from families who made less than $20,000 a year. Similarly, between 1995 and 2003, according to the report, grant aid from the same public universities to students from families making $80,000 or more increased 533 percent, while grant aid to families making less than $40,000 increased only 120 percent....Indeed, the highest achieving students from high-income families -- those who earned top grades, completed the full battery of college prep courses, and took AP courses as well -- are nearly four times more likely than low-income students with exactly the same level of academic accomplishment to end up in a highly selective university," the report concluded.

I'm sure these trends are due to economic principles like the law of supply and demand, not some conspiracy by elites to keep the rest of us down. There's a much greater demand for college degrees than there used to be, so naturally the price becomes higher. And taking better care of high-income families at the front end probably pays off in greater alumni support in the long run. But these statistics reportedly apply to state universities and major research institutions, which have a mission to serve public interests. Doesn't seem right to me.

--Gated communities of learning:Rising tuition and sinking bank accounts are turning the nation's colleges into bastions of inequality. By Andy Kroll (originally appeared on TomDispatch)