Rent or Tuition? The Growing Student Dilemma

(Truthout) For most members of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) community, life has returned to normal after the horrific shooting in May. Young people leisurely roll down streets on skateboards to buy supplies for nightly festivities, while others return from spending the day at the beach soaking up the summer sun. But for a growing group of marginalized students, this lifestyle is far from "normal." Increasingly, economic pressures are forcing some to choose between paying for rent or tuition. Amid the Mediterranean architecture and tropically-flowered landscape, lives a largely invisible population of homeless students.

In the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, University of California tuition skyrocketed by 355 percent. Nationally, inflation-adjusted tuition and fees at public universities have increased 27 percent over the past five years (2008 to 2013), according to the College Board. While it is almost passé to discuss rising tuition costs, readers may be surprised to find that this year, room and board expenses increased at a faster rate than tuition. Over the past five years, inflation-adjusted room and board rates across the country rose almost as quickly as tuition: 21 percent. Here at UCSB (and at most public universities in the country), room and board expenses still remain higher than surging tuition rates.

"Higher education can't be a luxury - it's an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford." President Obama's comments on educational reform in his 2012 State of the Union address must have sounded hollow to homeless youth, whose number had hit an all-time high in the same year. According to the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY), 1.2 million public school children under the age of 18 were homeless in 2011-12, a 10 percent increase over the previous year and a 71 percent increase since the beginning of the recession in 2006-07.

Unfortunately, homeless college students remain institutionally overlooked and no reliable nationwide data exists. Colleges are not required to keep data on student homelessness and FAFSA only recently began to include a question regarding the subject. On 2012-13 FAFSA applications, 58,158 college students identified as homeless, an 8 percent increase from the previous year and a 23 percent increase from the first year data was collected (2009-10). The actual numbers are likely far higher. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25258-rent-or-tuition-the-growing-student-dilemma