The Truth About Tuition

from the American Prospect:



The Truth About Tuition
The conversation about college costs shouldn't end at student loans.

Michael Dannenberg | August 19, 2009


For decades, the politics of higher education have followed familiar lines: Democrats champion higher Pell Grants for needy families, tuition tax credits for the middle class, and cheaper student loans paid for by cutting banks out of the system. Republicans advocate more modest Pell Grant increases and, with a few exceptions, protect the student-loan banks that enjoy a lucrative, risk-free business. President Barack Obama is following the traditional playbook. He has proposed increasing Pell Grants significantly and throwing the banks completely out of the student-loan program. Loans instead would be made directly by the government. "We should not be in the business of propping up banks," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters in April. "I'd much rather be investing in our country's young people."

But Pell Grants and student loans address only one side of the college-affordability ledger. The other is tuition, which is increasing at a rate that dramatically outpaces median family income. Student-loan debt is chasing ever-rising tuition like a dog chasing its tail. If we're going to stop the cycle and really improve access and affordability, the progressive higher-education agenda has to include slowing tuition growth.

That doesn't mean regulating tuition. Reform can be as simple as helping students make better decisions in choosing a college, incentivizing states to maintain their fiscal effort for higher education, and making the colleges that the plurality of students attend tuition-free for those willing to work. With these types of policies in place, we can restructure a large part of financial aid into a social-insurance system that has a lasting impact on college access and affordability.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton first proposed increasing financial aid by throwing banks out of the college-financing system. Taxpayer savings were to be plowed into increased financial aid offered in exchange for national service. The banks fought Clinton, but in the end, he shifted about one-third of the college-loan system to direct lending and won a scaled-down version of his national service program, now known as Ameri- Corps. Today, colleges choose whether to participate in the old system in which banks like Sallie Mae, subsidized by the government, make loans to students or in the federal direct-loan program. In 1996, Clinton worked the higher-education issue again, making it a centerpiece of his re-election campaign to win back middle-class swing votes lost to Newt Gingrich's Republican revolution. Clinton's HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning tax credits provided up to $2,000 for families making between $40,000 and $120,000 a year. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_truth_about_tuition

for the amazing tuition increases.

Every college I know about has more administrators and other non-teaching positions than ever, while phasing out more and more full-time teaching positions and relying on part-time adjuncts (who get no benefits) and temporary instructors (who stay no more than three years and never earn raises).

i seem to recall at some point most administrators were current or former teachers.
when did that change?

my undergraduate college had very few administrators. Even our academic dean was half-time and taught philosophy for the other half.

When I returned to my alma mater ten years later as an instructor, the college had four vice-presidents (including the former dean's position, which was now Vice-President for Academic Affairs), all of whom were paid more than any professor.

The rest are bureaucrats.

And even more sickening number: of the 100 highest paid employees at my college, only 23 teach.

The administration building is a money pit.

High tuition prices are just another way to stifle economic mobility.

1) Only the wealthy can send their kids to college...

2) Only jobs that require a degree pay decent money...

Result: If you're not born into the 'haves' you will never be one of them. (And it'll be your fault for not getting that degree!)

I've gone to two very "expensive" schools but it never cost me or my family that much. Maybe people less poor than us have some trouble, but down towards the lower end of the spectrum it's really not that expensive to go to college, at least not the colleges I've gone to.

A lot of very expensive schools have very good financial aid programs. I know a bunch of fairly poor grad students who will graduate, after 6 years of grad school, with under $10k in debt; most will have under $5k, and if they didn't use their credit cards so much they'd have less.

Same for undergrads. If you add to "diversity", you often get essentially a free ride, or at the very least tuition and room/board is covered. "Diversity" doesn't have to be ethnic/racial, it can also be class-based (although it's usually the former).

A recent report looked at student loan debt levels. Most kids graduate with under $20k, it's those who rack up huge debts that get all the press. Of course, this excludes professional school students (as opposed to "graduate school students", a useful distinction). Professionals make more upon graduate, and aren't research- or teaching-oriented, and so it's not entirely unreasonable that they wind up with massive debt loads.

from someone prevented from having a family or buying a house by $50,000 in student loan debt - all for a secretarial job.

I have a liberal arts degree that I paid a significant amount for (with some very generous help from scholarships, too), and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but without my law degree, I would be just scraping by.

I have many, many friends that incurred well over $100,000 in student loan debt at liberal arts schools, only to find that the jobs available to them were still paying barely $40k even 10 years out of school. Colleges offer little, if any advice on how to manage your student loan debt after you graduate, and rarely report statistics on how much their graduates earn.

The problem is that every time aid for education increases, colleges (both private and state) use it as an excuse to raise tuition. Just like health care costs, these prices cannot continue rising at this rate. I certainly hope we can find a solution that doesn't lock poor families from the promise of a college education.

Use the solution the rest of the world used to use. Go to another country and get an education. I suggest Canada for those who want to keep it simple. Even with out of country tuition it is still better than anything that the US offers.

The EU has many wonderful colleges as well as do many asian countries.

The US is not and has not been the end all and be all since Reagan got ahold of the reins of state and drove us right into the ditch.

$25,000 for one year, all paid with loans.

I decided not to continue with a PhD because I decided it was pretty much a crock. However, I have been unable to change tracks (I would like to train as an apprentice in a really socially useful career) because I am cornered by the debt. I just got a raise to $40K this spring (because my employer entered a salary war with another, potential employer). Two years ago I was earning $29K. So, I am just now STARTING to pay my loans off, at age 30.

However, I can't imagine who I would be had I not gone to college, lived abroad, and had the education and experiences I've had. I find it all really depressing.

So it can't get the kind of cost savings that other industries do, IMO. I think in real terms the cost of an education has stayed the same, but most people's labor isn't remotely worth what it used to be.

It doesn't have to be that way, but that is the way it is in all too many cases.