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| The Basics | Costs soar at public universities
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Double-digit increases this fall cap a decade in which tuition at state schools is up 47%, a new study reports. Will the neediest students be left out?
By Christian Science Monitor
After graduating from a high school near Phoenix, Caleb Alvarado decided not to get a full-time job like many of his friends, but to become instead the first male member of his family to go to college.
By living at home, working 20 hours a week, and taking out a pile of student loans, he could afford to enroll at Arizona State University, rated the nation's lowest-tuition four-year public flagship, at $2,583 last year.
But the tuition tide is changing. Alvarado, now a senior, is not so sure he could afford to be a freshman at ASU today. A 39% tuition increase this fall added $1,010 to the price of school -- and to the $25,000 in student loans he expects to owe when he graduates. One of his friends recently dropped out because of the tuition hike.
Across the nation, students and parents face broad tuition increases that, at flagship universities, were the largest in 30 years. The College Board, in its yearly look at tuition and student aid trends released this week, found that the average increase at a four-year public school this fall was 14.1%. That's twice the rate of increase found at private schools, where tuition and fees rose 6%.
The trend of tuition hikes runs nationwide. The State University of New York (SUNY) system has approved tuition of $4,350, up 28% over last year. Some students marched across the state in protest. At Oklahoma State University, a 24% hike. Iowa State University, 22% . Kansas State University, 18% .
Since 1993-94, the new report points out, average tuition and fees have risen 47% ($1,506) at four-year public colleges and universities and 42% ($5,866) at private colleges.
Potential crisis in higher education
The result, experts worry, may be to price many low-income students out of college, departing from America's post-1945 view of public higher education as a key tool for promoting social equality and a broader middle class.
The shift comes, moreover, at a time when education is an increasingly important ticket to good jobs.
"This is a potential crisis in the making in terms of having higher education opportunity available to those who need it the most: racial and ethnic minorities, first-generation students," says Travis Reindl, director of state policy at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, which represents 425 public four-year institutions.
Over a lifetime, the gap in earnings between those with a high school diploma and a B.A. or higher exceeds $1,000,000, the College Board reports.
A tuition tsunami
Public universities were planning tuition increases in all 38 states that responded to a recent survey by the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges. Double-digit rises were common, with at least 10 universities implementing increases of 20% or more.
"For the large public flagship institutions nationwide ... these increases could be as large as any we've seen since 1973," says David Wright, a senior researcher at the State Higher Education Executive Officers, based in Denver.
A key reason for the tuition tsunami: Cash-strapped states are cutting budgets. Their 1990s largess toward public higher education has already slowed, and for the fiscal year 2003-04 their support for universities is poised to fall by 2% to 3%, experts say.
University systems are raising tuition to help fill the gap. They are also trying to boost financial aid, but rising costs will nonetheless squeeze many families.
Will the needy be left out?
Already, the average yearly cost to attend a four-year public institution is 71% of the annual income of a family in the bottom economic fifth of Americans, according to the College Board. Student financial aid has grown, but in the form of loans, not grants. That makes college risky in the view of many first-generation students and their families. They don't want debts they can't pay if they fall short of a college degree.
For the first time, the College Board looked at costs net of any student aid. About half of all students receive some form of grant, the report said, with amounts averaging $2,400 at four-year public schools and $7,300 at private.
Yet, with two-thirds of high school graduates saying they intend to go to college, higher education has changed from an optional path for the elite prior to World War II to a required ticket to the middle class today. Some worry that the tuition leaps will keep the most needy students from going to college at exactly the wrong time.
"We're going to have the biggest high school graduating class in 2009 the nation has seen, bigger than the baby boomers," says Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose, Calif. "And what are we doing? We're reducing college funding and making it harder to afford."
If Hispanics and other burgeoning minority populations start to believe that getting a high school degree is a waste of time because they can't afford a public four-year college anyway, it may even boomerang and undermine K-12 school reform, he and others say. "We're tying to promote achievement for all children in K-12, and at same time we're now slamming the door on higher education," says David Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. "What if the 'No Child Left Behind' program succeeds? What will we tell all those city kids who want to go to college but can't afford it?"
A quarter of full-time undergraduates attend two-year public colleges. Of those enrolled in four-year institutions, about 29 percent attend institutions charging less than $4,000 in tuition and fees, and almost 70 percent face tuition charges of less than $8,000, the report said. Only 8 percent of students enrolled in four-year institutions face tuition charges of $24,000 or more per year.
(c) Copyright 2003 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
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