Tuition is on the march.
Since 2000, college tuition has increased a staggering 50%, the College Board reports. While a new study tries to tout that the rates rose less than last year, as a New York Times article points out, the 10.5% rise in public university tuition is still the second largest increase in over a decade, behind only last year’s enormous 13% increase.
The study attempts to emphasize that few students bear the brunt of the full college price tag by claiming that after grants and loans, the average net tuition cost for in-state students ends up at only $1,800. This distracts from the increasing inability of grants to reduce these huge costs as the system of grants and loans deteriorates. From 1998 to 2002, grant aid grew more rapidly than loans, but that trend has ended, says Sandy Baum of the College Board. Instead, students rely more and more on deferring the cost to loans. That’s peachy, except it means that graduates leave school with a diploma in one hand and an average student loan debt of an astonishing $20,000 in the other, according to Baum.
The survey dodges all political hot-potato attempts to explain these trends, but the New York Times says that reasons given elsewhere include “shrinking endowments, big increases in health insurance costs for campus employees and anemic higher education spending by states” that have led to an increased reliance on students shouldering schools’ costs. In other words, unless the frightening government trend of reducing college funding changes, students’ bills and debts are going to keep getting bigger.
On a more hopeful note, earlier this week, Congress passed a bill to close a billion-dollar loophole in the Higher Education Act that had been guaranteeing a 9.5% interest rate to private lenders of student loans. The bill will last for one year until the entire act is renewed next year. Both sides of the aisle are promising to find a way to extend it, although they’re bickering over how exactly to do so. Let’s cross our fingers and hope they keep students’ interests in mind. Strike that. Let’s vote and make our voices heard on these absurd trends in education costs.
- Anna Deknatel
10/25, an update: At least someone is being critical of the current solutions and attempting to suggest creative alternatives. Maybe our politicians will take some hints.
- Anna
The study attempts to emphasize that few students bear the brunt of the full college price tag by claiming that after grants and loans, the average net tuition cost for in-state students ends up at only $1,800. This distracts from the increasing inability of grants to reduce these huge costs as the system of grants and loans deteriorates. From 1998 to 2002, grant aid grew more rapidly than loans, but that trend has ended, says Sandy Baum of the College Board. Instead, students rely more and more on deferring the cost to loans. That’s peachy, except it means that graduates leave school with a diploma in one hand and an average student loan debt of an astonishing $20,000 in the other, according to Baum.
The survey dodges all political hot-potato attempts to explain these trends, but the New York Times says that reasons given elsewhere include “shrinking endowments, big increases in health insurance costs for campus employees and anemic higher education spending by states” that have led to an increased reliance on students shouldering schools’ costs. In other words, unless the frightening government trend of reducing college funding changes, students’ bills and debts are going to keep getting bigger.
On a more hopeful note, earlier this week, Congress passed a bill to close a billion-dollar loophole in the Higher Education Act that had been guaranteeing a 9.5% interest rate to private lenders of student loans. The bill will last for one year until the entire act is renewed next year. Both sides of the aisle are promising to find a way to extend it, although they’re bickering over how exactly to do so. Let’s cross our fingers and hope they keep students’ interests in mind. Strike that. Let’s vote and make our voices heard on these absurd trends in education costs.
- Anna Deknatel
10/25, an update: At least someone is being critical of the current solutions and attempting to suggest creative alternatives. Maybe our politicians will take some hints.
- Anna
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