Costly Education
By Mike Lynch
There's always something to worry about -- and for the government to spend more money on. The cost of college is never far down the list.
Back in January, the Lumina Foundation, which is spending a wad of cash kicked off from the student loan business, announced that Americans enjoy <A HREF="http://www.luminafoundation.org/monographs/states/pdfs/Web.pdf"> unequal access</A> to higher education, since the wealthy can more easily afford to pay full freight. And last week the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education delivered a <A HREF="http://www.highereducation.org/reports/losing_ground/ar3.shtml">study</A> that shows that the cost of public colleges and universities has gone up over the last 20 years.
Yet if higher education is becoming unaffordable, someone has forgotten to tell students, who've <A HREF="http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/01statab/educ.pdf">increased</A> from 8.6 million in 1970 to 14.5 million in 1998. Maybe this is because even as the sticker price of a college degree has increased, the returns to claiming one have <A HREF="http://www.acenet.edu/hena/facts_in_brief/1999/04_26_99_fib.cfm">shot up</A> as well. It's not as if governments have been neglecting the issue-college is clearly of great concern to middle and upper-middle class voters. In recent years, the federal and state governments have created and then liberalized the rules on tax-advantaged savings accounts, both <A HREF="http://www.fool.com/money/allaboutiras/allaboutiras10.htm">Education IRAs</A> and <A HREF="http://www.savingforcollege.com/">529 plans</A>. And the average price of tuition, which appears strikingly high when quoted out of context, masks the tremendous diversity of the collection of institutions of higher learning, which include everything from inexpensive and extremely flexible junior colleges to extremely expensive elite liberal arts schools.
Indeed, one dares say that in the higher ed market, there's something for everyone. Which is why the classrooms are full.
Mike Lynch is Reason's national correspondent.
<Maybe this is because even as the sticker price of a college degree has increased, the returns to claiming one have shot up as well.>
This is reassuring? As a college education becomes ever more necessary if one is to attain a decent standard of living, the cost of that good goes up. I mean, I understand why that is, but not why that's supposed to calm my nerves. I guess you could say that higher starting salaries make four and five figure debts easier to pay off, but still...
<And the average price of tuition, which appears strikingly high when quoted out of context, masks the tremendous diversity of the collection of institutions of higher learning, which include everything from inexpensive and extremely flexible junior colleges to extremely expensive elite liberal arts schools.>
Once again, I'm not impressed. How does this contradict the Lumina Foundation's claim that Americans "enjoy" unequal access to education?
At the University of Florida, which I attend, plenty of upper-middle-class students get to go there for free (or, if they scored really well on the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, they actually get paid to go to UF, to the tune of $2,000 dollars a year.) Why? Because of the Bright Futures Scholarship, which is funded by the sale of lottery tickets. Sure, some students of more limited means get the same deal, but not proportionate to their numbers. And, of course, students from poorer backgrounds can get into the elite schools, but they still have to be willing to shoulder a lot of debt. But, of course, this touches on issues of equality, about which the Reaganites at the Heritage and Reason Foundations couldn't care less, I suppose. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20020509/633140c2/attachment.htm>