Student Debt
In the last few editions of The Union Street Journal, I talked about clowns and police being able to get away with robbery, but this issue is a lot more relatable to us as it talks about a conflict the majority of us students will face: college. Well, not college directly, but the cost of college. Many of us will face student debt regarding college and while the richest and smartest of us will be able to get debt out of our way, it's still a pressing matter for the rest of us.
According to an article on the effect of inflation on college costs done by Time, tuition hikes are not being countered by financial aid, resulting in a bigger cost for families to pay for student’s college. That's more money coming out of your parent’s pocket to pay for the same education every year.
To put this in numbers, CNBC said that Harvard charged $200 in 1971 for the annual cost of attending the school, and now it is $45,278. People have argued that inflation is the cause of this spike in cost, but CNBC says that if the tuition had increased in a direct parallel with inflation, the cost should be just $15,189.
So where is this enormous difference coming from? How has the cost of college increased almost three times over?
One answer would be facilities. Sports, extracurricular clubs, recreational centers and activities contribute to the increased cost. They are maintained so colleges can attract students, as even they are competing with each other for consumers of their product. The consumers would be us students, and the product would be their teachings. These facilities are an added bonus to students to come to that college, but everything has a price, and since tuition is the main method of profit, they increase their fees so us students are paying more to get added bonuses to our college experience. But, the one group of people who don’t benefit from these increased costs are the teachers, whose salaries have remained stable with the exception of inflation.
Another reason for increased tuition would be budget cuts, which can be attributed to the recession as unemployment rates went up, and these cuts are staying at their present levels due to mandatory expenditures, which leaves less money for other things, such as education. The fact remains that us students are paying more for our education than the state budget, it's a shift in balance.
The truth of the matter is, there is no viable solution yet that people are willing to try. There will be a day where the cost of college will be too much, where students will be unwilling to go to extreme loans, that day is when college attendance will decrease.
When that day comes, some drastic measure will be taken to safeguard our education, but until then, we are at the mercy of tuition costs, and they are not receding anytime soon.
