The Tuition Hike

With this increase in tuition costs it is making a college education more and more unaffordable and putting students in more debt.

College tuition has been an increasingly intense topic of discussion over the years. The costs of higher education have been debated by many people, and it has been discussed as to whether costs are becoming too high for students to afford. College has become more and more popular, and now as many as 20 million students attend universities reported by The National Center for Education Statistics (1). The value of a college degree is immense, but college tuition is becoming too expensive for students to afford, and furthering the problem are students’ lack of knowledge on how to pay and earn money towards their college degree.

College tuition is a subject that I am certain is on every college student's mind. The current cost of college has become so outrageously high and so students are graduating college with what you think is a feeling of excitement for their lives starting, when in reality they are entering a pool of stress due to high amounts of debt and no job guarantees. With that being said overly expensive College Tuition is merely taking away opportunities from potential students. According to Collegefactual.com, you will see that 20 years ago the average college tuition for a student at any University was around $6,285 for the room, board, and tuition. Today, according to Niche.com, the average tuition for almost any college is over $30,000 for those same things. Today, this isn't even offered for those same colleges, we don’t even know what is actually causing the raising tuition. At this point in time, we are paying for the name. Just like clothing, we pay more for the “high end” (a.k.a the college name) items. This is an issue that not only affects college students, but people who want a good education. College tuition should be lowered because the average student debt is too high, FAFSA results can be misleading and not high enough, and there is not enough access to college for deserving students.

In the article, The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much by Paul Campos (2015) explains the motives why college tuition rose so much over the last decades. In the years where baby boomers went to post-secondary education they had summer occupations to be able to afford college, but after a few decades, the funding that was open to the public for institutions were reduced. Consequently, cuts were in-forced, the forms of higher education have been rising year after year. Furthermore, over the last twenty years more people have been going to college, for example, since 1995, the number of scholars that have enrolled in graduate and undergraduate curriculums have amplified by approximately fifty percent. Also, the earnings of professors have

The cost of tuition for California State Universities has skyrocketed over the last 10 years. It has forced many students to take out expensive student loans to complete their educational goals, often times leaving graduating college students steep in debt as they enter the workforce. Some of the contributing factors that I am going to address are inflation, the rising cost of living and the varying costs of different educational institutions

Increased tuitions are results of a variety of factors. Shrinkage of state budget and low endowments cause by the recession forcing colleges to make up the cost somehow (Lee). The government has increased their support during the recession. For example, in the form of Pell Grants which doubled over the years. Andrew Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, writes “... the increase of federal spending has been completely eroded by the rising tuition prices”(Bidwell). Higher tuition defeats the purpose of the federal government increasing their support.

Rise in tuition is often seen as a school trying to gauge as much as money as they can from the students. A view most forgotten in this argument is that of the school. The school has to have money to feed the students and house the students plus teach them. Those three things are a necessity for the students. Schools would face lawsuit after lawsuit if they failed to feed the students. The school also has to pay its employees and hire new ones that leave.

“College Prices Soar Again!” “Budget Cuts Cause Even Higher Tuition!” “Higher Education Now Even Less Affordable” These are all statements that have been seen all over the media: newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. (3 SV: SV) Rising college tuition in America has been a problem for years. Many students drop out after a single year due to the pricey costs of tuition. The rapid rise can be attributed to many aspects of the economy, not just a single source. There have also been some propositions of how costs could be lowered, but these have yet to be seen. The United States has gone into a tuition crisis.

Today college tuition prices are rising. Paying for college can often be a stressful responsibility. A college education is very important for many students, but when stressing on how to pay for college gets in the way, it becomes more of a burden. Kim Clark effectively states the rising prices of college tuition in her article, “The Surprising Causes of Those College Tuition Hikes.” Clark states that the cost of attending a public university, even after subtracting out aid and inflation, rose more than fifteen percent in the last

In 1965, the President of the United States Lyndon Johnson signed the Higher Education Act of 1965. This allowed for many things needed in the higher education system, one of them being low interest loans to students who need financial assistance to get through college. This is where the debt problem begins, but does not get out of control until the most recent past decade. Some of the drastic increase of debt can be contributed to more people going to college, but can also be contributed to state schools receiving less money from their respective states and needing to raise tuition and all other fees to cover the difference. Schools do have other justifiable reasons to raise rates as well, such as utilities, upgrades to the campus upon requests of the student population, employee wages, no one is willing to work

Nationwide the student debt is around $1.3 trillion (Chris Denhart) and in California the average student debt is roughly $21,382 (ticas.org). Recently UC regents approved an increase in tuition by 2.5 percent. The rising of tuition was to ensure that public universities could offer their students the same top-quality education even with the high enrollment demands and the reduction of state support. The students that will be most affected by this increase are students that don't receive much financial aid. But for two-thirds of the roughly 175,500 California student residents this increase will be covered (Teresa Watanabe). Some students are for this increase in tuition because they claim that classrooms have

College costs go up faster than incomes. This is copping out low and middle-class families from getting a decent college education. College is becoming so expensive that it is a dream to a lot of less fortunate people. The tuitions and fees are public universities have increased almost 130% over the past 20 years. Education prices shouldn't increase as jobs and income decrease; that doesn't make sense. For colleges to increase tuition fairly, incomes would have to increase making the average annual income more than $50,000. Whereas, in 2008, the median income was $33,000. That's a big difference. As prices increase, education opportunities decrease. This leads to a decrease in jobs. Ironic because businesses are looking for well-educated employees.

Another article that was related to my project was from the New York Times. Lewin (2013) found that as the price of tuition increases every year, the amount of state and federal aid offered to students is declining. Students that are struggling to pay the tuition at school can expect to receive declining help from state and federal government, which makes the struggle to pay tuition even more difficult for students that cannot afford to pay their tuition.

The tuition increases have come in response to the lack of federal funding to universities, leading them to find their own way to provide for their upkeep. “Recent increases in university tuition fees are part of a new entrepreneurial trend in higher education in which institutions are expected to generate more of their own revenue” (Quirke). The universities have decided that since they can no longer look towards federal funds to fuel their costs of maintenance and revenue, they must find a new route towards attaining much needed funds, and they have chosen to

As a result of this, states receive pressure to make up for this and must raise tuition. Grant donors are also becoming less generous in their contributions to students as well. This makes affording college even harder for students.