Cadet Mason Briggs
Mrs. Smith
ERH 102
March 27, 2017
Help received: Purdue Owl, Works Cited, peer review
Could you imagine living in a world where the cost of higher education is higher than it already is? Some families are spending up to seventy thousand dollars or more per year on one child alone. According to a news article written in 2015, the U.S. news reports that the average cost of tuition for an in state university has risen two hundred and ninety six percent from the years 1995 to 2015(Mitchell). The cost has almost tripled in only 20 year; this could mean thousands and thousands of dollars out of some family’s pockets. According to advisorperspectives.com the median household income is actually one thousand dollars lower in 2017 than in the year 2000(Mislinski). In a previous writing I wrote that “If the cost of tuition has tripled and the average family income has dropped, how are families expected to pay that much, if many could not afford it before the price increased? Some people just do not have that much money in their budget to pay for the school. This has prevented many people from attending college and in many cases from getting a good job. A college degree is very important in today’s world to get a good paying job. Many people are also complaining about where all the money is going. They say that the money from tuition and board are going toward programs such as the sports teams and not toward their kids’ education. The money needs to be going towards the books and classes and not random things (Briggs, Mason, 1).” We also need to come up with plans to make college more affordable to all families regardless of their background. The governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has proposed a plan in order to make tuition in New York free to families making an annual income of less than $125,000 (Lobosko). These ideas need to be considered when the cost of tuition continues to rise as it is. Colleges and universities are raising the costs of tuition for a variety of reasons which is causing many kids to not enroll in school and this needs to be changed.
One of the reasons for this is the extreme competition between universities. Now day’s schools want to be the most appealing to the upcoming students to get the most people to apply to their school. Schools are literally dumping tons of money in to things like landscape, housing, facilities, and meal plans for students in order to attack as many students as possible. In an article written by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, entitled “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important Drivers of College Cost?” many examples are given on where this money is going. One place a lot of this money is feeding in to heating and air conditioning in dorms. Many rooms did not have heating or cooling until the last few years. A chart on page thirty four of Robert Archibald and David Feldmans article shows the trend in the room prices at private universities. Since 1965 the cost of rent has gone up nearly two hundred and fifty percent. They calculated a six point six four percent increase every year which is very significant when you are talking about tens of thousands of dollars. The cost of meal plans has also gone up close to a hundred dollars (Archibald and Feldman). Schools want to offer high end foods to make the school look more attractive but all that money has to come from somewhere. Schools are trying to offer foods like sushi and steak to attract my applicants. During my interview with High school AP Physics teacher, Jennifer Briggs, I asked where she thought all of the money for tuition was going. She went on to tell me about a tour she took her students on to High Point University to show them what the college experience was like. She told me about the “amazing facilities”, “grass that looked like Disney world”, and “free ice-cream!!” (Briggs, Jennifer). She used the tem free very lightly because then she went on to tell me approximately how much it costs per year to go there. She said for tuition and board it cost somewhere around seventy thousand dollars a year which is absurd (Briggs, Jennifer). These upgrades may seem nice but all that money has to come from somewhere. Students are not even given the option wither they want theses amenities or not, and these can raise the cost in some cases thousands of dollars.
Over the past years college has gotten so expensive that many kids can no longer afford to go there. Many people question whether it is still even worth the cost to go there. In some cases now a days colleges can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a four year education. Many students come out of college with so much debt it takes a good portion of their life to pay it off, if they can even pay it off. In many cases in today’s world in order to get a good paying job you need a masters or a Phd, in order to get the job you want and earn an affordable living. Does the cost even outweigh the benefits of going to college? Because of the huge rise of the cost of higher education, this thought has been brought to the minds of thousands all over the world. College is a crucial point in a person’s life that cannot be passed up. It is often seem to help transition you from childhood to adulthood. Jennifer Briggs said it is an important experience of living on your own and learning how to socially adapt to those around you. It helps you manage your own finances, belongings, and prepares you to live on your own (Briggs, Jennifer). The thought of not attending college because of finances should never happen.
I am currently a student of the Virginia Military Institute paying an annual tuition of fifty two thousand dollars a year. If the tuition is increasing at an exponential rate while the cost of the annual family income has dropped almost one thousand dollars over the last fifteen years, and the average family income in the United States is right at fifty thousand dollars how do they expect some family’s to pay that (Mislinski). Fifty percent of the population makes less than enough to pay for one year of education for one person. And although the Virginia Military Institute is a great school there are even more expensive ones out there. How can they send their kids to a good school and get an education to get a good job, if they make less in a year than the cost of one year of school. They would have to spend a majority of their life paying off their college education. That is just unfair to the families who do not make enough money to send their kids to school
Another conclusion I would like to bring up is that a ton of this money for tuition is also being brought in to get better teachers. Universities want to get the best professors that they can and this like before leads to more competition, causing an exponential growth in teacher salaries per year. Based on the chart provided By John Thelin, we learn that the annual cost of instructors can be extremely high. At the University of Wisconsin the average annual salaries is the instructing staff is approximately $489,810 dollars and at Columbia University they can even get up to $1,145,000 dollars per year (Thelin, 589). If you think about it, if you have fifty to a hundred professors at a university that is going to be a large sum of money. All of that money has to come from somewhere and that usually means from the students pockets once again. Just because the schools want to be the most appealing it is causing many kids to decide not to go to school, and the students need an education to be successful.
Are schools right in justifying their reasons behind raising the price of tuition for students? Schools need to cut back on their spending on appearance and many more kids would be able go to school. Archibald and Feldman gave many examples of were a lot of the money is going. Schools are putting a lot of money in to things that are making the school look aesthetically pleasing. They are putting large sums of money in to heating and air-conditioning, Landscaping, facilities, and amazing meal plans that will now serve high end food. They are trying to draw the attention of students to get them to apply and come to their school (Archibald and Feldman). A lot of money is also being put in to get the best professors they can which leads to competition. Some universities are even paying up to millions of dollars for their professors. The university of Columbia is paying on average 1.4 million to its professors, and and last time I checked that money doesn’t just appear (Thelin). This may be very good for education but leads to competition among the schools which has been raising the cost of tuition at an exponential rate making it very hard to afford. Higher education is very important for a student to get a good job after graduation, have a smooth transition from childhood to adulthood, and do something that they enjoy doing. Many families cannot afford to send their kids to college now days. Schools need to monitor their spending or come up with alternate plans to allow lower income families to attend their school. Although these things are appealing they are not as important as getting a degree and a good job. And if the colleges are not going to change what they are spending they need to create new opportunities for lower income families to send their kids to school. One option is they could provide opportunities such as the ones provided in New York implemented in the year 2017. New York is offering free tuition to families making less than a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars a year, thus allowing those families to attend college (Lobosko). Opertunities like this counld help lower income families attend universities that they could not before. Schools tuition has been increasing at an exponential rate and if schools do not rethink their budget and spending students all over the world will soon not be able to attend college. College is a very important part of people lives and development and it should not exclude anyone from attending and getting a degree.
Word Count: 2,015
Works Cited
Abel, Jaison R. and Richard Deitz. “Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs?.”
Current Issues in Economics & Finance, vol. 20, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96880995&site=ehost-live.
Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Are Plush Dorms and Fancy Food Plans Important
Drivers of College Cost?.” Change, vol. 43, no. 1, Jan/Feb2011, pp. 31-37. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1080/00091383.2011.538649.
Archibald, Robert B. and David H. Feldman. “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs.”
Journal of Higher Education, vol. 79, no. 3, May/Jun2008, pp. 268-295. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=31597078&site=ehost-live.
Briggs, Jennifer. Personal Interview. April 10, 2017.
Briggs, Mason. “Proposal: Breaking the Bank with Higher Education” March 4, 2017.
Lobosco, Katie. “ New York Governor proposes free tuition at state colleges.” CNN Money,
January 4, 2017, http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/03/pf/college/cuomo-new-york-free
tuition/index.html, Accessed April 12, 2017.
Mislinski, Jill. “January Real Median Household Income: Little change from December at
$58,056.”Advisor Perspectives
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2017/03/02/january-real-median
household-income-little-change-from-december-at-58-056
Mitchell, Travis. “See 20 Years of Tuition Growth in National Universities” U.S. News
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for
college/articles/2015/07/29/chart-see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities.
Accessed March 4, 2017.
Thelin, John. “Why Did College Cost so Little? Affordability and Higher Education a
Century Ago.”Society, vol. 52, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 585-589. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1007/s12115-015-9953-8.
“Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding.” ASHE Higher Education Report, vol. 39, no. 2,
May 2013, pp. 71-77. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/aehe.20008.