gloomy!

[llcoolvad]

So here's an interesting article about rising college costs, similar to what I talked about here.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.



Seriously, where do colleges get the nerve? 439 percent??? Why isn't this rampant profiteering highlighted more in the press? One article in the NYTimes. Random mutterings other places. There's just no excuse for this, even under the guise of a "free market economy" (which considering that most of the private schools cost approximately the same is more like a monopoly than a free market). This is no less scandalous than the Wall Street fiasco, and you could effectively argue that it's more evil as it will lead to a less educated populace.

Feh! Time for the revolution! Up against the wall!

(ETA Times graphic)

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Here in California, for the first time the CSU system cannot guarantee every student a place at university who qualifies. B students are being turned away! The lack of funding for education through taxes and bonds and the cutting of the budget at the government level has ruined the higher education opportunities. It's so fucking sad.

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

In Texas, the legislature has reduced funding drastically. The state school where I work has tried to build up its own fund with donor money, but it's slow going, so tuition is taking up the slack.

However, most of the costs of running a university is salaries. At least that's what I hear whenever faculty and staff ask for raises. Does that mean university salaries are increasing at a faster rate than other salaries? It feels unlikely. We did raise our minimum wage from around $5/hour to $9/hour a few years ago, but then we laid off a bunch of low-paid workers and hired and outside company for those services.

This sounds unrelated, but it's related to athenais' comment: To try to reduce racism, my state instituted a rule where anyone in the top 10% of their school (no matter how poor or crappy) could get into the state college of their choice. Now they're thinking of changing it to a lower percentage or to saying they can get into a state college, but not necessarily the one of their choice because over 80% of our students are admitted under the 10% rule. I hate both of those solutions and think that the problem is that our population is growing but our college space isn't. My school is the same size it was in 1978, for example, and when they started getting a little crowded, they deliberately made it smaller again. Someone has proposed that we should turn one of our mediocre schools into a third "flagship" school that people want to go to. I like that idea much better.

**

Not only are the costs higher, but I think financial aid is worse. When I was in college, a Pell grant covered my tuition, fees, and books at the state school I went to one year (though much less at the private school I went to the other years). Pell grants are not that big anymore.