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Share Your Thoughts on Trends in College Pricing
Price increases at both public and private colleges and universities again outpace inflation by a significant margin while students and their families again wait for the answer to a simple question - why? For too long, parents have grimaced and borne the high price of college because they presume that a higher education is key to their child’s success in today’s economy. Surely, the day will come - soon - when parents say enough is enough. Has that day come yet for you? Please share your thoughts on trends in college pricing by leaving a comment below.
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on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 5:08 pm and is filed under College, College Costs, Empty Wallet.
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February 13th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
In our country too there are many schools and universities which require high fees. And lately the public ones, have raised their taxes, with which I don’t agree with.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:58 am
The whole college pricing structure has stunned our family. My college freshman was an honors student-took every AP and honors class offered at our high school–made all A’s in every course. We thought colleges would give great scholarships for students of this caliber. Scholarship offerings were pathetic. We got 1 small scholarship from the school, not elibible for any other aid.
Ah,the good ole FAFSA. Expected family contribution is an absolute joke. Our contribution to tuition ended up being over twice the EFC. FAFSA does not take into consideration personal factors which should be included–the numbers would surely be different. Life is not always black and white, but the FAFSA surely is!
College costs are so prohibitive for the middle class that I really don’t know how families can realistically pay costs such as these and stay solvent. The whole system needs to be restructured.
Our politicians know this, don’t care, do nothing.
We–parents and students, need to be organized politically in order to get anything done. A grass-roots effort by parents and students to get these costs in line would be a start. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.
October 28th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Having put six children through college (some more pricey than others - USC, Syracuse, American U), co-signed for one law school education, and still paying for one Master’s Degree - all leaving the kids debt-free - I have had an up-close-and-personal interest in the subject of college expenses.
Every college graduate is dunned for contributions to the endowment fund. So I tried to find out where those funds go. Almost none of them reach the students in the form of direct financial relief. Some schools, mainly the Ivies, have endowment funds that earn more INTEREST each year than it would cost to offer a free education to every student. This is NOT an exaggeration. So, parents, before you pack Susan or Steve off to XYZ University, ask them why they keep raising student costs while their endowment fund grows and grows.
And, College Parents of America, where have YOU been on this travesty?
You want stats? I’ve got stats.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Twenty years ago, I prepared a detailed college funding plan for my son and daughter (she is now 3rd year at U of Michigan, he is a high school senior and applying to colleges.) The model had several key assumptions: our savings budget, general inflation, average rate of return on the portfolio, college cost estimates, and rate of college cost increase. We wanted to fully fund 4 years for both kids at private schools. I assumed college cost inflation would would be about twice general inflation (at the time, I thought this was an excessively pessimistic assumption, but used it to error on the safe side.)
I followed the plan, and even with negative portfolio returns in 2000-2003, all of my forecast assumptions proved accurate, except one: the average college cost increase was about FOUR TIMES the rate of inflation — twice what I’d assumed.
I think the higher education system is gouging us (setting price in excess of incremental cost) because they can — demand exceeds supply, there is little competition and very high barriers to entry.
So, for those of you planning for the future, I suggest estimating college cost inflation at six times general inflation because I’m sure there will be no let up in tution gouging until demand finally drops off, and the only way that will happen is when prices are truly insane and/or demographics shift.
Although I have many other complaints about higher education and its current social pathology, I still see it as a must for my kids and as a justifiable investment. But, I have mostly contempt for the system as a whole.
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I am so resentful of the price of higher education that I just want to scream!!!! . Here is a great fact to look at. The average student is coming out of school with 80,000 in loans. They are refinancing those loans to 30 year loans and get this…. they will be paying for their own loans when their children are starting college. Of course the middle class gets no breaks once again, what else is new. This country is run on the backs of the middle class and we get no financial aid or any considerations by the government of what this will do to the retirement income and how this is a house of cards that will eventually fall. The bottom line is that college is a business, forget all the higher education requirement levels now. It is a business and they are cashing in. It will get so that the middle class will not be able to afford to send their children to college. That makes me so angry that we who pay the taxes and support this war and are the majority in this country are once again, being overlooked. Wait and see how this will pan out when your children are saddled with loans and you have to help them in your retirement, which will stresss the healthcare system. What about your children being able to buy a house with all these loans? Is this country asleep? Where are the voices of the middle classs including myself who sit back and watch all of this go on? We have more power than we think and things can be done since we are the majority. Come on people… why don’t we just start screaming out ….I am sick of this and I am not going to take it anymore…and I can think of so many areas in this corrupt administration where that would apply. Starting with gas prices, Haliburton, the news reporting crap, healthcare and the list goes on.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:34 am
Although we have an increased need for improved technology and possibly more expectations for our children from schools…we once again pay more and more. I would just like to say how frustrated I am. Of course our income is to high for any grants and scholarships…I know of one family whose income is in the poverty range and they still earned to much for any help. How is that possible. Someone please explain this to me!!!!!!!!!!!
It will end up at a point where middle class children will not be able to attend college. Gas and Heating go up…our income goes up 3%. Once again our households are overlooked.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:43 am
I am both the parent of a college student and an employee of a college. I agree that tuition prices are getting out of hand, but I think there is at least one reason that was not mentioned in the article that is an important reason why colleges keep raising their costs. That reason is the demand for services, technology, and luxuries that students and their parents are making on colleges. We continually have parents of new students who call and complain because their child is assigned to one of our “old” dorms on campus — it has community bathrooms. Their child just can’t live like that. My daughter, however, has faired very well in an “old” dorm with a community bathroom. We have students and parents who are constantly complaining if the technology on our campus is not the latest and greatest — because their students need that. Services that parents and students demand require personnel to perform them and personnel require paychecks. We can’t keep adding to things on campus without adding costs. College costs are rising, but some of it is our fault as consumers making demands — not the fault of the colleges.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:31 am
Prices are ridiculous. Caps should be placed on what colleges can charge by the federal government. I myself attended Rutgers University (undergrad) Fordham (grad) husband Columbia (undergrad) University of Chicago (grad). We have four children. Two are high ability students, two are average. One is set to graduate from University of Pittsburgh in December (thank god one down). When looking for schools price and quailty were huge considerations. No name to me is worth paying fourty - fifty grand for saddling us and the child with huge debt. I think that because of pricing there are extremely bright kids scatttered all over the place. Bright individuals would see that paying fourty to fifty grand for an undergrad education is just well plain “stupid” (unless you get mega aid minus mega loans). Bright employers will see that there are lots of really bright, capable students out there attending a variety of schools. The name on the diploma will mean less and less…. (I don’t think the name is what gets you places anyway it is who you are and your work ethic)…. Bright parents will say WHAT that school??? FOURTY FIFTY GRAND not worth it……..my own child applied to Tisch end of sophomore year, accepted into Dramatic Writing Program, and we said to him, FIFTY GRAND???? Twelve thousand in AID with EIGHT LOANS…ugh think about this for a minute…..what MAKES SENSE and he said staying at the good old University of Pittsburgh (personally I think public colleges are harder than private, bigger, more distractions, no hand holding AT ALL) hmmm lets see, this child has had internships at ESPN in NYC, BBC in London (we said stay at Pitt and do a semester abroad) Academy of T.V. Arts and Sciences in LA this summer, Cannes……..he has done just fine……………someone ought to step in and put and end to this pricing madness…the cost of energy, auto’s, housing and COLLEGE will crash the economy yet……………….
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:42 pm
As long as more and more jobs in the workplace continue to increase the level of education they require to even consider looking at an applicant’s resume, colleges will be able to increase their costs however much they want. It is not just the demand of parents and students for better education that the colleges are able to feed off of, they are also convincing employers that if an applicant doesn’t have a certain level of degree, they won’t be capable of performing adequately in the workforce. Parents and students are stuck. If the kids are going to get a job, they cannot just refuse to play by the colleges rules because those are also the rules of the employers.
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:23 pm
My son earned his bachelor’s in computer science last spring, and due to a combined program at his school, will earn his master’s this year. He already has secured a job with a large company, partially due to his summer internship, and will start next spring making almost as much as his dad and I combined (we are smart people, but neither of us has a college degree). I cannot see where he could have possibly gotten that far that fast without a college degree (unless he took up a trade). In today’s economic world, we cannot imagine how he would be able to buy a house, support a family, etc. without that degree. Unfortunately, college is not for everyone, and I think we are producing a society that makes it sound like you are a total loser if you don’t go to college. We have a lot of kids going into tremendous debt who, quite frankly, were never suited to college level work. The flipside is our high schools do little to encourage the kids who do not excel academically (think No Child Left Behind) to prepare themselves to earn a living that will keep them off of welfare. There has to be some balance struck between the two worlds.