Month: February 2016

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College for All, but Who is Paying?

by Joseph Betz

The rising cost of college is no myth, including compensation for inflation, the cost of tuition and fees at a public university is now 4 times what it was 40 years ago. While government aid covers some of this burden, students still must resort to taking massive student loans to cover the cost of a higher education. But can the government afford to do more?

11.1 million students attended public colleges and universities in 2014, taking into account undergraduates and graduate students. States spent $73 billion funding higher education in 2014 leaving students with $64.3 billion in tuition, which comes out to $5,793 per student on average. In 2000, states spent $51.9 billion which left the 8.6 million students with $21.5 billion in tuition, coming out to an average cost of $2,500 per student.

Bernie Sanders has proposed his “College for All” plan that would aim at paying for this $73 billion tuition bill by increasing federal funding by $47 billion and state funding another $23 billion. The federal government would pay $2 for every $1 that state governments spend on tuition at public universities. In addition to drastic tuition aid, the plan calls for cutting student interest rates to about 2% for undergraduates. The cost of this plan could potentially be up to $750 billion over the course of 10 years.

Sanders plans to fund the program by imposing a 0.5% fee on stock trades, a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Warren Gunnels claims that this would raise up to $300 billion a year, citing a University of Massachusetts report, whereas Steve Rosenthal, a Tax Policy Center senior fellow, reported that it would only raise about $51 billion.

The expanded access to low cost higher education would be revolutionary, with far reaching societal and economic ramifications.

http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1975-76-2015-16-selected-years

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/news/economy/sanders-taxes-spending/

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2015/09/28-taxes-inequality/would-top-income-tax-alter-income-inequality.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/03/politics/bernie-sanders-free-college-costs/

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Rising Price Tag on College

By Samuel Smith

The price to go to college has risen over the years. The question is: “Why?” Sure, inflation has to do with it, but what else is causing how much we pay to increase? While some people at universities may be overpaid, there are other more widespread causes as to why college tuition is rising. Colleges seek to only benefit themselves from their students’ hard work. This is done by having students attend the university, graduate and get a good paying job, then make generous donations back to their Alma Mater. Colleges have the best chance of achieving this by attracting as many students to their university as possible. Colleges are simply in a war over who has the most students because it gives them a greater chance to graduate students who will go on to have prestigious positions in life which the college can proudly say they have produced. Colleges compete to attract students by producing more that is outside of the classroom. Colleges have lost their focus on their original purpose of educating people at a higher level so that those people might be able to apply for a better job to have a better life. Colleges nowadays are more selfish by wanting to be the best with their athletic facilities and student services in order for students to come to their institution. The cost of college for students has also increased due to government funding’s inability to keep pace with the rising cost to attend an institution. The cost of college is due to the fact that colleges are seeking prestige rather than quality education of their students, and put the price on the people who are willing to pay it to go to a reputable school.

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Building a Showcase Campus

by Justin Jackson

I can say almost with absolute certainty that many of us students attending Widener University enjoy the many amenities and appurtenances the school has to offer, from the Pride Recreation Center to the new Harris Hall and its conveniently located Moe’s Grill and Einstein’s Bagels. They, as well as everything else, are very appealing and most certainly do add to the bonuses of the campus and the school as a whole. However, the cost of such benefits and additions is very much a big one to bear. Today, as many high school students are comparing their prospective schools of choice, I know that they all are considering what the school of their choice has over other schools descending their “maybe” list. But, what they – as well as the many currently enrolled college students – may not know is that the cost is being passed down to them in this race to build a showcase campus. According to New York Times writer Andrew Martin and researches at Moody’s, the debt colleges and universities have amassed to attract students to attend their school through building and expansion is well over $200 billion. To pay off these high prices, the colleges raise tuition, which cause more in student loans. One such example of elaborate and exuberant building seen on campus is the one built by the Cooper Union in New York City a few years ago. That development caused the already struggling school to amass more debt.

I fondly remember reading an article back when I was a freshman that caught my attention and frankly caught me by surprise because of its strong and fierce claim: college is a big business. Though I could not fathom the reasons behind such an article headline at first glance, upon reading the piece in its entirety, I soon came to understand that higher education has become a business, from the hierarchy of administrative staff all the way down to the mechanism used by colleges and universities to add to their funding. Education is a business because now it is more evident that the race to educate more students is so fierce so colleges can at least attempt to muddle themselves out of the debts they have acquired.

 

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Exponential College Tuition Inflation

by Eric Guzy

 Tuition for college is commonly described as being overpriced and far from payable on the salary of a student working part time at your local diner. However, how come it seemed that the prior generation, with an abundance of hard work and resilience were able to pay for school with a part time commitment? 

In 1980 the minimum wage in our nation was $3.10. However, the cost for four years of university study (plus room and board) was $64,572. In 2015 Minimum wage was $7.25 on average and the average cost of tuition (plus room and board) is $175,684 for four years. The average work week hours logged per capita for a part time job is 30 hours. In 1980, if you worked thirty hours a week for your 8 semesters of college (15 weeks a semester) you would make about $11,160, which is about 17% of total tuition. However in 2015 with the same formula you would make $26,000. This is only about 14.5% percent of total tuition. 

This difference may not seem drastic, but the rate of inflation is rising faster than employee salary can pace. With college becoming such an important nexus between today’s work force and the current generation many people have to choose between whether to suffer uneducated or to suffer constantly in the unremitting circle of getting an education to get paid, to pay off the education people took out loans to pay for because they felt they needed to make more money to change the world. 

This alone is astonishing, but once you calculate for interest rates in today’s world it almost seems as though college should be formally recognized as a debt collection monopoly.

Data Sources:

http://www.alternet.org/education/how-did-college-education-become-so-ridiculously-expensive

http://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1975-76-2015-16-selected-years

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College tuition is too high, but why?

By Mason Tracewell

It is clear that college tuition has increased drastically and many students are taking on a substantial amount of debt to go to college. The real question is: Why are tuition prices still rising? A recent study has tried to answer this question and the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER) findings suggest that faculty salaries and state cutbacks don’t drive prices higher, but student aid availability drives prices higher. The argument is that the availability of more student aid allows for the schools to charge more tuition, because the students can pay for it. Also the study suggests with more state funding the schools can offer lower scholarships, so that the students pay the same amount, but the college pays out less money.

My problem with the study is that the study includes both private and public college data. I feel you would have to judge the two separately based on the vast differences between them in regards to funding, scholarships, and tuition cost. The researchers used data only from non-profit schools and this may have skewed the data and therefore the conclusions should not be stretched out to all colleges. I agree with the study that faculty salaries are not what drive tuition prices higher. Colleges are relying heavily on part-time faculty and these members get paid low wages with no benefits. Also the model college in the study combated increased faculty costs with increased student enrollment and this also suggests that faculty wages are not the reason for increased tuition.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/09/study-increased-student-aid-not-faculty-salaries-drives-tuition