College Tuition Costs Rise 6.5% This Fall

[OhioChick]

Source: AP

Average Price Of Public Colleges Up To More Than $7,000
1:58 pm EDT October 20, 2009

The average price of public colleges rose 6.5 percent this fall to slightly more than $7,000.

The figures were released Tuesday in a comprehensive annual study released by the nonprofit organization the College Board.

The estimated price that students actually pay after financial aid was about $1,600 at public four-year colleges. But that was still higher than last year as financial aid failed to keep up with tuition increases that colleges blame mostly on state budget cuts.

Tuition at community colleges also rose. But after counting financial aid community colleges are still essentially free to the average student.

At private colleges, prices rose 4.4 percent to over $26,000 -- though the average bill after aid was under $12,000.


Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/money/21348724/detail.html

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Soon, no one will be able to afford to go....other then "the elite."

[Craftsman]

1. In related news the .gov report minimum inflation.

[Joanne98]

2. Get rid of Sallie Mae!

[girl gone mad]

4. +1

[mike_c]

3. 32% at my Cal State university-- this semester ALONE....

Part of the California meltdown.

[XemaSab]

9. I'm SO glad I graduated when I did

:(

[Deja Q]

5. And then everyone wonders why nobody wishes to become educated...

Too fucking expensive...

[OhioChick]

6. Not only the expense....but for "what jobs?" n/t

[Doremus]

7. I'd love to know what this financial aid is they speak of.

My son and us, his parents, were offered a $500 Pell grant and all of the plus loans we wanted. We are not wealthy, far from it. Lower middle class, basically living week to week and thankful that we are getting by.

What is this mysterious financial aid that can bring a $7K tuition bill down to $1600???

Who do they offer it to? Why don't they offer it to everybody?


Anybody know?

[OhioChick]

12. Probably have to be living under a bridge to qualify for it. n/t

[Jkid]

8. I'm on my 4th year college

At this rate it will take me another year to finish and my pell grant and guaranteed access grants only last four years. All that's left are student loans, and that's not even enough to cover tuition.

I can't get a bloody job, even a part time job even before the economy. This country seriously free universal higher education.

1.Payment of tuition and fees in it's entirety.
2.Payment of room and board in it's entirety. Or a dorms are unavailable, a similar monthly amount for housing and meals.
3. $800 living stipend a month.

All you need to do to qualify is to get accepted at a college or university and maintain a 2.0 average.

In before private and searching for scholarships.

[XemaSab]

10. Let me help you out:

Its = of it. The entirety of it.

It's = it is. It is fucking usury.

:P

[Jkid]

11. What are you talking about?

[Psephos]

13. Ubiquitous loans have pushed obscene inflation in the college-education industry.

Yet almost no one dares question how college prices have exploded at double-to-triple the rate of inflation for 20 YEARS. No one thinks it's a little weird that colleges can't live in the same economy as the rest of us?

The truth is tuition costs have little to do with the price of good education. (Unless someone is prepared to say that when education cost a third of what it now costs, in constant dollars, that it was only a third as good. hah) It's not about the professors. Instead, high tuition has everything to do with massive expansions of facilities, administrative staffs and non-educator employee rolls, business operations conducted under political rather than economic principles, no understanding of cost/benefit analysis in capital planning, golden employee benefits with unfunded pension and retirement plans, huge network infrastructure costs (so students can cruise Facebook and YouTube during lectures), more, more, more....

Availability of loans pushed demand, not supply, so costs rise relentlessly as they do in any market where more dollars flood in to chase the same goods or services.

Meanwhile, students leave college with the equivalent of a first-house mortgage, but no first house. Student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and is not subject to any statute of limitations, so there is no legal escape from it ever. Students who earn a degree in lower-paying (or nonpaying) fields routinely run up 50,000, 75,000, 100,000 in debt. Many more leave college with no degree, but just as much debt. They are even less likely to service their loans.

We have no shortage of demonizers for the health insurance industry, but barely a peep when it comes to the robbers who run our universities, and the perverse incentives of those who dreamt up the government's student loan programs.

It is beyond disgusting that education costs have raced upward as fast as education quality has declined. It is simply immoral that this huge industry is financed by hanging millstones around the necks of its "customers."