The college affordability dream is dead
The average college graduate today starts their foray into adulthood with $29,400 worth of student debt. More than one-quarter of today’s 38 million student debtors is strapped with $50,000 or more.
“We’re not talking about a little bit of a inconvenience,” says Dan Hurley, a policy expert with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “We’re talking about [debt] that can absolutely, fundamentally alter a life’s trajectory.”
Four decades ago, the financial burden of college wasn’t nearly as onerous. When Ann Hubbard, 60, enrolled in the University of Wisconsin back in 1972, the Steven’s Point, Wisc,. native paid just $600 a semester for tuition ($2,500 in today’s dollars). Hubbard’s parents couldn’t afford to chip in, but she was able to pay her way with a combination of federal student loans, careful budgeting and a hodge podge of minimum-wage jobs.
“I wasn’t stressed about paying for college at all,” says Hubbard, who majored in psychology and sociology. “I graduated with about $2,000 in loans. I knew it could be spread out over 10 years. I paid it off in less than three.”
Since Hubbard, now a service director at the Epilepsy Foundation Heart of Wisconsin, graduated in 1976, stories like hers have become increasingly rare. For most students today, the idea of getting a part-time job and working their way through college isn’t just farfetched — it’s practically laughable. Working 20 hours a week at a part-time job at today’s federal minimum wage rate ($7.25), it would take the average college student more than five years to pay off the average net tuition cost ($35,000). And that doesn’t include expenses like housing, transportation and food.
“College affordability is really a big issue and we all need to be addressing it,” Hurley says. “Instead of young adults purchasing homes and goods and services, they’re paying [for school], which doesn’t generate any income for the country.”
Randy Olson, 28, did everything he could to minimize the cost of college. He enrolled in a school close to his parent’s home in Florida and lived with them during his undergrad years. That he would pay his way through school was never a question — his parents expected it.
So he took a minimum-wage job as a Walmart cashier and cobbled together side gigs as a computer programmer. His aggressive work routine allowed him to chip away at his student loans more each year, but eventually it became as much a burden as it was a boon.
“I failed one class and I dropped a couple of others simply because I didn’t have time to study for them,” he says. “I don’t want to paint it all in a negative light. It helped me figure out what I wanted to do after I graduated, too. But it took away from the [college] experience, meeting other people, exploring new ideas.”
Disproportionate rise
The correlation between how much states invest — or don’t invest — in higher education and the relative rise in tuition rates is clear, Hurley says.
Federal funds for education given to states has declined greatly since before the recession, according to a recent report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. Today, 48 states invest less in college education than they did before the recession.
With tighter budgets, public colleges and universities largely reacted by increasing federal and state aid in large part with increases in net tuition. The cost of tuition and fees have soared by more than 1,120% since the government began keeping track in 1978. That’s twice as fast as healthcare and six times the rate of food costs. Meanwhile, the average American family’s wages barely budged over the same period.
While lawmakers and education leaders squabble over how best to manage the untenable costs of higher education, students and their families have pretty much been left in the lurch. And rather than take on unmanageable amounts of debt, some are giving up on the college dream altogether. Overall, college enrollment fell from 20.2 million in 2012 to 18.9 million in 2014, according to a recent report by the National Student Clearinghouse.
