Question

In this module, we learned that, despite increases in the cost, the value of higher education has increased over time. How can college be made more affordable? Revenues earned by colleges and universities come from three main sources:

1. Tuition and fees paid by students, which have increased faster than the cost of living.
2. Support from governments at the federal, state, and local levels. This support is paid for through tax revenues. Even private colleges and universities obtain funding from the government, but government support has declined at all levels in recent years.
3. Alumni contributions.

What has caused the cost of college to increase so much? (Not every college has a fancy gym or an Olympic sized pool with a lazy river.) What features of your college education would you be willing to do without to make college more affordable?

What do you propose should be done to make higher education more affordable? What reasons can you provide to support your argument?

(200 words minimum)

Answer 1

The high level of tuition in U.S. universities can be blamed on many factors. On top of shrinking state appropriations there are more technology-intensive degrees in every field; an aging campus infrastructure; a sharp increase in compliance and regulations reporting; and soaring health care costs.(working on all)

University administrators should be deeply concerned that our price is limiting access to an education that enables upward mobility. Interestingly, the conversation on access and affordability seems to be fixated on controlling, first and foremost, the increase in tuition. We need to broaden the framing of this discussion considerably.

The first step is to change the conversation to one of the total cost of a degree. The simple fact is that timely completion of a degree is a critical mechanism to control total cost. A tuition increase pales in comparison to going to school for another year.

The second step is to recognize that the only thing worse than going five and six years in order to graduate, is to accumulate debt and drop out before graduation.

Universities like Penn State are justifiably proud of their high graduation rates. However, when you dig deeper, you discover that first-generation, need-based students have a dramatically lower graduation rate than most of their peers. At Penn State, they graduate 22 percentage points below the average. We can point to many factors that cause [this graduation gap], but it’s clearly not due to lack of ambition.

Sixty-two percent of these students work an average of 22 hours a week, usually at minimum wage jobs, so they can’t take a full credit load. It is impossible to graduate in four years. They drop classes more frequently than other students and tend to have lower grades because of their work load. Sadly, they also don’t have time to participate in advantageous activities, such as research or internships. They get discouraged. They either give up or end up attending a fifth or sixth year at a significant cost. If they graduate, they have paid more and gotten less from the experience than other students.

Our universities need a laser-like focus on mitigating all factors that slow the time to the completion of a degree. Every student should have access to financial literacy advisers and tools that help students take the most cost-efficient way to achieve a degree. We need “completion” programs to be a priority and not allow students to slip away because of finances or other hardships.

We can serve our mission of upward mobility and save students millions in costs and debt if we help every student, regardless of financial capability, to graduate, and graduate on time.