college is EXPENSIVE! (part two)

I’m not trying to suggest that colleges keep raising prices for no reason or to get the institution and faculty richer. Rather this money is often used for expansion and similar measures to increase services for students and appeal for the college. In effect, the college is kind of like a car enthusiast with an endless budget; he keeps growing his collection and customizing his cars (like adding to existing departments of the school) all the while racking up maintenance and expansion costs.

The enthusiast can afford to keep the cars he doesn’t even look at or care about anymore. Colleges similarly tend to keep undersubscribed programs and those which generally have a higher cost to student ratio. In this way, the selective major that only has twenty students is adding to everyone else’s fees. Certain programs, even if taken by a lot of students have a likewise effect. Music majors who need one-on-one tutoring or drama/studio productions or chemistry labs with sophisticated materials and equipment are the main reason that the significantly cheaper education of say a literature or mathematics student costs so much. These factors and several more complex/insignificant expenses add up to explain what colleges do with all our money.

So what’s the solution? From a strictly economic perspective, the ideal solution would be to sever college’s access to payment methods. If grant money became less plentiful and more importantly, the government stopped subsidizing and backing student loans, then there would be few if any ways for most to afford tuition where it is now. The only real remaining source would be traditional lenders such as banks, but few of them have any reason to risk financing an unemployed or minimum wage working 18 year old. So when people can’t afford education anymore, colleges would be forced to actually budget their money in a realistic way. This is the ideal fix to get tuition to affordable rates, but as you can guess we just can’t do that. What happens to all the students caught up in this process who end up not going to college at all?

For now all we can really do is ask colleges to use their common sense. I mean really, just because you don’t have a budget like the average citizen or business or government, doesn’t mean you can keep spending at the expense of others. Hopefully, necessary changes will be made, specific majors appropriately priced and unnecessary expenses cut. With any luck the experience of college will soon be available to and less difficult for all of us!

PS Let me know what you guys think about the subject and please leave a comment if there’s any fact or perspective I didn’t take into consideration because I for one really hate it when people jump to or make false conclusions. Thanks and good luck to my fellow prospective students.