college is EXPENSIVE! (part one)

It’s scary but I’m just a year and a half away from college. And so I and many of my friends have begun the search for where we might want to spend four years and perhaps the greatest realization for many of us is that college is expensive. And not just expensive, it’s seriously ExPeNsIvE. Unless you plan on attending your own state school, you’re looking at a tuition of anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 on average and even in state schools range from $9,000 to $25,000. And this doesn’t even include room and board which is thousands of dollars more. To me that’s just outrageous, I mean unless your family earns about $250,000 or more (so less than 1.5% of Americans), these kinds of costs are impossibly high. So I did some research about the subject and as to what colleges could ever need this much money from thousands of students for.

OK so lets go back to the year 1810, tuition at Yale was $33 or about $1,800 today. 200 years later, tuition is $37,000. That’s over a twenty fold increase… why?! In fact, much of that increase has occurred over just the past three decades affecting our and previous generations. The increase has outpaced inflation and even the infamous spike in medical bills. Again why?

Colleges are admittedly expensive with numerous specialized professors and state of the art facilities but this has always been true, not just since exactly three decades ago. In fact technological advances have made it even easier to deliver these same amenities to students as computers especially have eased nearly every aspect of education (from research to grading, record keeping etc.). Supply and demand have also had little affect. The number of degree granting institutes has tripled over the past 60 or so years but at the same time, demand has grown exponentially. Imagine your own families; ours and the past two generations for most families include the first college graduates. In fact for many of us today who seek higher paying professions, four years won’t even do and graduate degrees seem ever more important. All-in-all rising costs just don’t make sense.

Most of the loans and financial aid that facilitate each student’s total payment can be made as a result of massive grants, donations and extremely secure government backed loans. These programs which are often seen as helping students achieve the education of their dreams, often leave them indebted for decades and are the vehicle by which colleges can raise their tuitions with few or no consequences.