The cost of higher education has sky rocketed since I was student all those years ago. What cost me $4,000 a year now costs over $25,000, an increase of over 6 fold. The cost is rising exponentially, not lineally. In fact I can’t think of much else to compare it to.
Well, other than art by highly collectible dead artists that has increased so much in cost.
Gas is roughly 3 times as expensive as it was back then. Food, probably twice as much. Housing costs depend on where you live, and from what I’ve observed, they have increased by 2 to 3 times. And the price of technology has decreased. (Unless you’re shopping for a very large plasma TV, and the price of them is dropping.)
Accounting for inflation, the $4,000 a year it cost to educate me is equal to $7,470.24 as of December 31, 2007. That’s a $17,500 gap between the cost of living and the cost of purchasing.
Multiply that over 4 years, and you’ll most likely get a butt-load of debt with your diploma.
Not the best graduation present in the world.
Universities, both public and private are notoriously secretive and evasive when it comes to determining why the price has increased so steeply. Even state universities are reluctant to justify their increases. And their financial books are supposed to be a matter of public record.
The increase is self-evident, but the justification always seems to be that things cost more than they used to. Granted they do. But not at the same rate as tuition and fees have grown.
And certainly not at the rate of wages used to purchase education have not grown.
Any other industry (and, believe me, education is an industry) would have been investigated by now for price-gouging and possible anti-trust violations. Let any other industry raise prices so sharply and uniformly, and they'd be talking to a Congressional panel about possible abuses and colusion.
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