Is College Becoming a Luxury Reserved for the Wealthy?

It is commonly held as fact that a solid college degree and education can propel young people into high positions with lofty paychecks. Even outside of that the experience of college and life on campus is an opportunity and experience that few would like to miss altogether. For millions the dream of sending a child to school is becoming just that, a dream. The net price of school this year rose 2.3% to an average of $18,391 for in-state students.

Why is this happening? States have cut the amount of money they give to colleges by a total of $15.2 billion since 2007, while at the same time the number of students enrolled in college has risen 12%. The average public college gets a tax subsidy of only $6,646 per student, down from $9,300 five years ago. In order to make up for these subsidy losses the price of attending school has increased with the regularity that we’ve seen.

Curbing the steady hikes in costs will obviously not be an easy task and one with many different angles. The Obama administration has proposed initiatives to help in this regard by imposing a college rating system that would score institutions based on their affordability and quality. This faces resistance from schools and a group of bipartisan lawmakers, one of whom claims that under the plan, hundreds of schools would be forced to close. Translating the good intentions into rules without doing unintended harm to the US higher-education sector will be extremely difficult but is something that must be handled if the idea of a college education is to be seen as attainable in the future.