The most recent biennial report, “Measuring Up 2008,” from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education finds that total college costs (tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid) increased a whopping 439% from 1982-2007. Meanwhile, median family income rose only 147%. College students have been forced to borrow twice as much over the last ten years and poor students get smaller grants than students who are more well off.
According to Patrick Callan, president of the center, the American middle class has been financing their kids’ education through debt. “The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever it takes,” Callan tells the New York Times. “Even if that means a huge amount of debt.”
Last year, net college costs at a public university accounted for 28% of the median family income. Net costs at a private university were predictably higher: 76% of the median family income. Meanwhile most universities are talking about even more tuition increases. Clearly, this is unsustainable.
As a result, the current American generation is actually less educated than their parents, even though enrollment has risen. According to Callan, this will harm US competitiveness in the near future. According to an article in the Washington Post, 40% of US citizens age 35-64 have an associate’s degree or higher, with only Canada having more. But the US ranks 10th in the percentage of citizens age 25-34 with similar degrees.
What’s especially worrisome is the level of cluelessness in the university community. David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), told the New York Times: “We think public higher education is affordable right now, but we’re concerned that it won’t be, if the changes we’re seeing continue, and family income doesn’t go up. The public conversation is very often in terms of a $35,000 price tag, but what you get at a major public research university is, for the most part, still affordable at 6,000 bucks a year.”
Where, exactly, is a net cost of US$6,000 available at a “major public research university”? At the University of Minnesota, where I’m an employee, which is both a “major public research university” and a land-grant institution, tuition alone is more than US$10,000 this year.
In a competing report, NASULGC maintains that declining state appropriations were to blame for rising tuition costs. NASULGC claims that public research university budgets, on a per student basis, are barely higher than they were in 1988 and that tuition increased at 6.61% each year. Again, using the University of Minnesota as an example, the Minnesota Daily reports that the cost of tuition has doubled since 1995 and is US$3,000 more than it was in 2003. It now costs more for a student to attend the University of Minnesota than it does at Berkeley. University of Minnesota tuition will rise another 9% over the 2010-11 biennium.
Declining state appropriations is a problem. In 1997, 71% of University of Minnesota revenue came from the state. In 2007, only 26% of the university’s revenue (.pdf; 612Kb) came from the state appropriation. In 2008, the state appropriation to the university dropped to 21% (.pdf; 576Kb).
The question: how can we make higher education both sustainable and affordable. The answer: higher education has to be a funding priority at both the federal and state levels. Unfortunately, that’s not likely to happen with more than 40 of the states running deficits. Minnesota’s deficit, announced today, is US$5.3 billion for the 2008-09 and 2010-11 bienniums, almost 14% of the total budget. Neighbor Wisconsin is in similar straits.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.