Back when I went to college, in the early 80's, the average cost of attending a four year university

[WCGreen]

was about $8,500. Now I think I paid that in total for all four years of my education. I went to Ohio State and Cleveland State, two main stream schools. (On Edit, This is per year)

Oh yea, and these rates are adjusted for inflation, up to 2009 dollars.

Now, the annual cost to go to your average college is right around $20,000.

You can check out a pretty easy to look at graph here.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

It also breaks the cost down in current dollars.

So why has the cost of getting an education sky rocketed?

The easy answer would be, I guess, more people are going to college now that it has become apparent that you need a college education to toss you anchor in a middle class harbor.

That could very well be part of the reason. According to US Census Bureau stats, in 1980 about 49% of those graduating from High School went on to seek higher education. Now, 69% seek higher education.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0272.pdf

But what I think has happened is that the easy access to student loans has caused the cost of higher education to increase so dramatically.

Easy access to loans are a great way for those in need to get that education so essential to success in 21st century America. But it also puts people behind a rather large 8 ball as they face the adult workplace for the first time.

According to the WSJ, A growing body of research suggests that tough loan payments are affecting major life decisions by recent graduates, forcing them to put off traditional milestones—from buying a first home to even marriage and having children.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574388682129316614.html

From my point of view, it is the easy access of student loans and the infusion of that money into the education industry that has made it easier to raise the price instead of managing the affordability of their product.

In short, there is no real supply and demand decision making on the part of the consumer. The kids want to go to college, they need to go to college to fulfill their career goals and they don’t have to worry about the costs because that will come down the road when they are out in the job market.

So, here comes the Solomon like question, do you deny access to a person who can’t afford to pay for college out of pocket or do you increase the access as we have done now.

Another problem with the system as it stands now is that under almost no circumstance can you get your student loan discharged if you need to file bankruptcy.

In many cases, if the student passes on before the loan is paid off, the person who cosigned the loan remains liable even if that student passed on before even entering the work force.

I get it from a business point of view but really, why so draconian.

Especially if you take into consideration that some guy who borrows millions to try wildcat oil drilling can write down that money in a bankruptcy. That surely is a shakier premise than borrowing to become an engineer.

Maybe we should, as a society, start really looking at the cost of education. Especially in this greed is good culture that we still seem to live in.

Why are we charging a student wanting to be a teacher the same rate as another who is say going for an accounting degree.

Perhaps we should start charging a student based on the major they have selected. Of course, how many people do you know that earned an Archeology degree are actually digging around in the Middle East looking for artifacts.

The bottom line is the system is broken. More and more graduates are saddled with a mountain of debt that, if truth be told, sucks money out of the market place. How many are paying off a debt instead of buying a new car, or buying a house or starting a business.

getting rid of a cut and paste burp on edit...

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. "Perhaps we should start charging a student based...

... on the major they have selected."

In 20 years you won't be able to get a BA at a state school in the US, though a few showy exceptions like Ann Arbor or Berkeley will survive.
Business is already the largest major, and anything other than STEM is going to the wall anyways.

Your future in a world without archaeology majors is assured.

[WCGreen]

7. I guess university is now more of a vocational school....

[hifiguy]

26. "Business" schools

are one of the primary drivers of the decline of this country. Nothing they teach is necessary save for accounting, which can be folded into the math or statistics departments, and IMO every one of them should be shuttered. They churn out nothing but parasites.

[Davis_X_Machina]

45. In medieval universities...

...there were faculties of theology, law, and medicine. (A university had all three, that's how they got their name.) And all three were vocational tracks. We've still got that system, but economics/business has replaced theology. We've changed what we worship, is all.

[Demeter]

2. I went to college on $200/year 1972-76

Paid for by Mass. state scholarship based on College Boards....for all the good it did me.

Trained, and basically unable to stomach corporate life.

[teenagebambam]

3. As a college professor

I can assure you the extra cost hasn't been going to salaries. I'm beginning my fourth year without a raise.

[provis99]

23. but salaries always go up for administrators.

College administrators are as useless and overpaid as corporate CEOs are. Your average college administrator should be earning LESS than the average college prof, who do the actual work of teaching and research.

[teenagebambam]

42. Actually my husband's an administrator at the same school

and hasn't had a raise in that time either.

[readmoreoften]

24. This college professor makes less than customer service workers I know.

And I am not an adjunct. And I have a Ph.D. And the customer service workers do not have college educations. And I am in debt from school and training. Not that I think they deserve less. I just think I deserve more.

[teenagebambam]

43. Before I got this teaching job

I was making more and had way better benefits. Doing glorifies data entry.

[teenagebambam]

44. Before I got this teaching job

I was making more and had way better benefits. Doing glorifies data entry.

[HughBeaumont]

4. In the 90s, I graduated with no student loan debt.

A miracle for anyone attending post 80s college and certainly unheard of in modern times.

[benld74]

5. I graduated in 81 from SIU-E and I totally agree,,,

I had less than 5 grand to pay off a 4 1/2 year DOUBLE MAJOR business degree. I DO NOT recall interst being paid back on that loan to the government, although there probably was.
I went back in 99 to get my MS and a MBA. 20 total classes. $20 grand to pay off. Class cost went from 850 to over 1100 from the time I started until my last class. THis was after the government GAVE the loans to private enterprise, who of course offer LOW rates of 8 percent at the time.
We took off on taxes ALL that was allowable. After that we rolled it into our house payment.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. I was lucky...my parents paid for mine...

I think they'd invested in government bonds, and cashed them in to pay for my education.

I don't think this happens very often these days...

[Major Hogwash]

17. I paid for most of mine myself.

My dad paid for my first semester, but then he said he wouldn't pay for anymore.
So, I worked to put myself through college.
But, I burned out within a year, so I joined the Army and then went to college at night and on the weekends to get my first degree.
Most of the older students were taking night courses, so I fit in better then anyway.

[hfojvt]

8. that seems kinda low

I figured at one time that my dad spent about $25,000 for my five years at the University of Minnesota, and that was in 1980s dollars. It was about $10,000 for tuition and $15,000 for room and board. I remember the dorm was about $300 a month for ten months, so $3,000 a year by five years. I think I saved about $500 a year by being in CLA instead of IT for two years, plus I always got the best deal for tuition. Originally it was, you paid for 12 credit hours. So if you took 16, 17, 18, or 19 then you got the other classes for free. I always took 16 hours or more each trimester, so I got about 15 classes for free over the five years. My parents paid for 180 credits, but I took 266 credits. So I got almost two more years of college for free.

Not that it ultimately did me a damn bit of good.

But $25,000 in 1985 is the same as $52,44.70 in today's dollars. So my ANNUAL cost was over $10,000. Not $8,500 for all four years.

[WCGreen]

12. It's the average as I found on the site...

some are going to be a lot higher...

Mine were actually lower.

[ParkieDem]

9. It's just like the housing bubble.

The easy availability of credit caused housing prices to skyrocket, and the same thing (whether it be loans, grants, etc.) has caused college tuition to go through the roof.

And seriously, is a college education really that much better nowadays than it was in the 80s? I doubt it.

But one of the later posters has it right: The availability of these loans has caused colleges to compete on every metric except price. So, they hire more "prestigious" faculty, build new research institutions, construct elaborate student recreation facilities, and put students in ever-more luxurious dorms (few even have shared bathrooms nowadays).

At some point, this is all going to come crashing down. People will (and perhaps already are) understand that the enhanced earning power a college degree might give you is not worth the debt that you will have to pay after graduation. If that's the case, you'll see more students just getting two-year degrees, or doing the best they can with a high school diploma.

I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. I fully understand the need and value of education for education's sake, but at the end of the day, you can't just expect to keep paying and paying dollars for it when there aren't dollars in return. That's just life.

[woo me with science]

10. The banks profit from our debt, and now even college has been restructured to maximize the profit.

College funding, that is.

Education, once a way out of poverty, is now a debt mill, turning graduates into a perpetual money source for the banks. These students will be launched into a treadmill of working long hours to pay back debt, enriching corporations and allowing the banks to collect interest on massive student loans until they die.

And it was not enough to drive the people at legitimate colleges into this profitable debt cycle. Now we see the mushrooming of fly-by-night professional schools across the nation that promise to improve people's lives by helping them to become medical assistants or daycare owners or graphic designers or counselors or etc.

They are, for the most part, a scam and a farm for student loans. Many accept students without regard to qualifications, knowing that they will drop out. The classes are often junk. Students earn credits that won't transfer to legitimate colleges and worthless "McDegrees" that do not improve their chances of getting a job. They will be slaving in low-paying jobs in corporations to pay back debt and to pay the bankers interest on their student loans for the rest of their lives.

And now witness the huge push to privatize and profitize the public schools of our children. If we keep enabling the purchase of our government by banking and corporate interests, everything will be privatized like this and structured to create a society in which we are nothing but spigots for their enrichment. It is no accident that we have heard on DU just in the past 6 months about for-profit prisons, reform schools, and even charities.

For-profit charities. This is how far we have come.

They are economic predators. They are seeking to own all of us. Now they are even using education to do it.

[FarCenter]

11. What are a university's major costs? Buildings, grounds, salaries?

Those would seem to be the major budget lines that need to be cut in order to reduce tuition.

[JHB]

28. Sports teams and their facilities

As long as you have sports teams "raising the profile" of your school, what do you need low tuition for? And, of course, the administrators should be rewarded for their foresight in making this happen...

[FarCenter]

46. Sports, athletic centers, student centers, and grounds probably account for a lot

Athletics and student life amenities account for a lot of the budget increases, I would think.

Many campuses have buildings with fancy architecture that are expensive to maintain, and they tend to have lots of buildings with trees, lawns, walkways, and other landscape features to maintain. Their land and building costs are probably much higher than a typical office park with equivalent square feet.

[closeupready]

13. I thought I understand that, in the 80's, college in Ohio was free for in-state students.

I know that public universities in Texas were dirt cheap for in-state students back then. As were many of the Big Ten universities.

How times change. :(

[WCGreen]

20. No, they sure were not....

I think it was about $375 for a full load of 12 or more credits per quarter, as I remember.

[tridim]

14. Yesterday someone on FB posted a 1969 hospital bill for a baby delivery

Total charge, $157.00 for the delivery, medication, food, nursery fees and a three day stay.

I think my brother just paid somewhere around $20,000.

[udbcrzy2]

15. The technical schools that are popping up are charging

out the yang yang. I spoke to ta respiratory therapy assistant who went to a tech school and she had to pay 54k. If she would have gone to a community college she could have gotten by on 5k maybe a little more. She said that the community college had such a long wait list (3years) to get into the program and that's why she chose the technical school.

[NNN0LHI]

16. In the 70's only people going to college out of high school were going into professional positions

Doctor, lawyer, CPA, etc.

Rest(most) of us got jobs first and then either worked our way through college or didn't go to college at all.

Don

[LiberalEsto]

18. We're stuck paying our kids' student loans

At the moment we're shelling out $572 a month, but it'd going to increase by more than $200 when the younger one's student deferment expires next year. Since I've been unemployed for 3 years, we can't save a penny for retirement. I hope our kids remember that when it's our turn to live in a cardboard box.

[Cleita]

19. Back when I was college age, tuition was free in the

California State College and University system. Community colleges were also tuition free. Fees and books were not. All students had to figure out to do was how they were going to support themselves. Many went on the GI bill which gave them a living stipend or they lived at home. I myself went to a Catholic women's college on scholarship, but if I didn't have that I could have attended one of the universities or state colleges. Reagan as Governor and Proposition 13 after that destroyed the free education qualified student could enjoy in my state.

[zazen]

21. decline in state subsidization and institutional isomorphism

plus increase in administrative costs to service research administration, which is necessary to generate additional revenue for the universities for salaries and research through competitive grantseeking and industry-university partnerships.

[Terry in Austin]

22. Two hundred bucks a semester

Or in today's dollars, $1344. That's what it cost me at the University of Texas in the late sixties.

Of course, they have come out with a whole lot more knowledge since then!

B-)

[hifiguy]

25. $320-450 per quarter at the University of Minnesota - Mpls

between '81 and '85. Another $75 - 100 for books. Lived at my mom's home, never worked because my mom wanted me to focus on school. Owed about $2500 when I graduated.

[Blue_In_AK]

27. I went to college on $50 a semester 1964-68

Plus books.

[LeftishBrit]

29. When I went to university in England in the early 80s...

the cost was free gratis for nothing.

Now the fees at most universities are about to rise from £3000 to £9000 per year. That comes to about $14,500. Not as much yet as Americans pay at many places, but I'm sure we'll get there.

And all introduced by politicians who mostly had THEIR university educations for free.

[bvar22]

30. Back in the late 60s

when I went to College,
anyone could attend the State University,
and graduate DEBT FREE if willing to work a Part-Time job.
THIS was The NORM.
You could also afford to own & operate a used car while attending school.


We could have that again,
IF we had a Political Party that represented the Working Class & the Poor,
like the Old Democratic Party.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want a party that will STAND UP for Working Americans."
---Paul Wellstone

photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed


"By their WORKS you will know them."



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[WillyT]

31. Sacramento City College (Two Year) Mid-70's, Free...

California State University, Sacramento (Four Year), Late 70's/Early 80's, $95.00 per semester.

:shrug:

[mod mom]

32. In Ohio here is one reason: Kasich got $4,000 per session as a fellow

OSU paid Kasich $4K per classroom session

By Laura A. Bischoff, Columbus Bureau Updated 9:25 AM Monday, August 16, 2010 COLUMBUS — As a candidate for governor, Republican John Kasich has called on colleges and universities to cut costs and force professors to teach more courses.


Yet for seven years Kasich served as a “presidential fellow” at his alma mater, Ohio State University, in a role that paid him the equivalent of about $4,000 per campus visit.


“It sounds like a perk program for a politician that we can’t afford,” said Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank that has posted government salaries in an online database.


-snip

The job was among the many hats Kasich wore in the years after he left Congress in 2000. Although other politicians, including Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman, have taught courses at OSU for no cost, Kasich’s role paid him $50,000 a year.

-snip

http://www.journal-news.com/news/hamilton-news/osu-paid-kasich-4k-per-classroom-session-861545.html?cxtype=rss_local-news

Cronies get sweetheart deals while the taxpayer gets the shaft.

[Maeve]

33. And my History of Art textbook cost $25--used it for three classes, still have it

Wonderful reference book. (circa 1976, btw)

'Go Bucks' has a slightly different meaning in this context...

[ItNerd4life]

34. To your point: There is no supply v demand for college NOR healthcare

and so there is no restraint on rising costs. Both have grown at an annual rate of 6% or more for the last 30 years, yet inflation has been around 3% a year.

There is no Supply v Demand because colleges and hospitals are community type businesses, you can't just build one on all the street corners.
This I believe is where the government has failed miserably. These types of businesses don't have any capitalism type forces to keep costs in check
and no incentive to be more efficient. Yet, the government hasn't done anything to try and remedy this.

Also, I know may professors who have to spend more time doing research than teaching so they can keep getting grants. Professors
first and foremost should be teachers, not researchers.

I really liked what you wrote and how you expressed it. Well thought out and no hyperbole.

[WCGreen]

38. Exactly....

[dtexdem]

35. That's the cost to the student. In the meantime, states have cut back on paying their share.

They've effectively heaped more and more of the costs onto the students.

[exboyfil]

36. Speaking only for Iowa

The state support has not increased with inflation. If you look at education spending in Iowa, you will note that the spending is increasing faster than wages in the state, but all the increase is dedicated to K-12. If it was not for the universities getting more external money (grants etc), the tuition increases would even be worse.

Right now the universities are doing something that I think is very wrong - they are charging more for engineering and nursing majors than the liberal arts majors. They originally gave two justifications for the change. The first was because it costs more to educate an engineer (yes but usually the engineering departments get a large percentage of their budget in research grants - so how much it is more per student is really questionable). Also does it cost any less to educate a Physics major??

The second reason is that engineers are more able to withstand the higher tuition because they have more opportunities for internships and will command a higher salary after graduation. So instead of encouraging individuals to go into these majors, the universities are attempting to throttle down the numbers by charging additional tuition.

[housewolf]

37. LOL! When I went to college in the late '60s, my tuition was $185 a semester

And books cost about $30. And gasoline cost about $.30 per gallon

Oh how the times have changed!

Seriously, we have done our youths a horrible disservice in saddling them with tens of thousands of dollars of debt for their education just when they are starting out in life.

[Fuddnik]

39. My stepson went to Cleveland State.

Until he moved into the Animal House and flunked out.

I think he was Bluto.

[Le Taz Hot]

40. I can do you better than that.

In California, Community College (first two years of a four-year degree) was FREE. You just had to pay student body fees and your books so I paid nada for my first two years. I transferred to a 4-year university and tuition was about $750.00 a semester. This was early to mid- 80's (I didn't start college until I was 26).

You are correct, though. The privatization of student loans (and subsequently, raising interest rates), the cutting of grants and other educational subsidies, and the rise in tuition are all too conveniently coincidental. I know if I were a young person today, I wouldn't be willing to owe $60,000+ for a 4-year degree, especially when so many with degrees are forced into entry level, non-skilled positions because that's all the jobs that are available.

[amborin]

41. University of Caliornia tuition & fees $12.6K per year....

but not for long, with the continued budget cuts