The Rise of College Tuition on Public Universities

Trends on the rise of college tuition over the last decade.

College tuition has become a major issue facing students over the last decade.  The rising price of public university tuition across the country has played a huge factor in student’s decisions on where to attend and how to finance their education.  Over the last decade, tuition fees have increased 5.4 percent annually.  This is 2.24% above the inflation rate in 2011 which was 3.16%.  With the rise of college tuition surpassing the inflation rate, we are seeing that the financial burden is hitting students deep in their pockets.  Since education is the common pathway to financial and personal success, we need to know the reasons for increased costs, and how to combat these issues.  

         
Decline of government spending on education directly impacts public universities and students.

In the last decade, government funding for public universities has dropped by 21%.  14.6% of that decline has happened since the 2008 recession, which has caused the average tuition at state institutions to rise by 33.1%.  This heavy burden has caused state institution’s to raise their tuition costs to be able to finance the necessary resources and capital to keep their institution running.  This has put burdensome costs on students.  In the last four years, the average cost that individual students have paid has gone from 24% to 30%.  While parents are taking on a lot of student’s tuition costs, the rising costs have seemed to be limiting them to be able to meet all of the financial needs of their child.  This has caused an 8% increase in student loans since last year.  By cutting funding to public universities, we are seeing a direct effect on rising rates of students loans, which is putting many students into deep financial debt straight out of college. 

         
Rising cost of highly educated work forces drives college tuition up.

In a technologically focused society, it is easy to see productivity rise at accelerated rates when increases in technology occur.   When this happens, the need for labor decreases, which in turn forces prices to decreases.  While this seems like an easy way to describe how to fix a situation in a manufacturing environment, Dr. Cindy Clement, the director of Undergraduate Studies in Economics at the University of Maryland, explains how education is a service, and services do not always react to technological changes in the same way.  

Dr. Clement explains that with the need for a highly educated labor force, in an environment demanding higher educated labor with the skills necessary to teach in an evolving technological enviornment, incurring costs for that labor increase.  To meet this the demand of labor, public universities must act by increasing tuition costs. 

           
How to combat rising tuition costs.

Part of President Obama’s plan during his campaign for presidency was to cut college tuition in half over the next decade.  While this seems like a great idea, Dr. Clement states that “this could be accomplished, but the quality of education will decline significantly.”  To maintain the quality of education and decrease the price of tuition for students, Clement states that “we will have to use technology much more effectively then we have done to date.” 

There have been many strides to accomplish this such as MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).  But how credible are these?  Getting an education online can be looked down upon for the validity of someone’s education.  While recording classes and sending them out to the masses to take decreases the amount of labor and facility use significantly, the quality of education can decline as well.  This type of education will provide less teacher student interaction, peer learning environments, and validity of student work.  In order to have the quality and validity of education to stay the same or even increase, we must find new approaches.

A great example of this is Journalism 150 at the University of Maryland.  This course provides a blended atmosphere where students receive both in class instruction while also being provided online instruction.  While the labor of the instructor remains the same, it requires less facility time, which can in turn save money.  Another benefit to this class is that it enables all materials and assignments to be online, cutting costs of materials and only needing personal devices to accomplish class requirements.  While this is a great format for certain classes, it is difficult to apply this method to every class at a university.  Blended learning environments are a great step in using technology to increase the quality of education, but to cut costs in half, there needs to be significant new technological developments and methods in the coming years to provide the structure of education to remain at such a high level.

Students are facing difficult decisions today about the payoff of high costing tuition.  It is putting many students into debt after college and causing many students to take different paths in obtaining their degrees.   While we are moving forward every day by developing more and more technology, it is essential to figure out how to implement that technology with new educational methods to cut tuition costs while maintaining its educational quality.  

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