<p>"A College Board report released today showed that the average price of attending college rose more than 5% this fall, but education officials warned that the current economic crisis might cause sharply higher tuition bills next year.</p>
<p>Annual tuition, fees, room and board for in-state students at four-year public colleges and universities increased 5.7% for this school year, to a national average of $14,333, and rose 5.6%, to $34,132, at four-year private schools, according to the Trends in College Pricing survey. Financial aid cut those bills in many cases.</p>
<p>Those increases were close to the 5.6% climb in the national Consumer Price Index in the fiscal year ending July 2008 and were relatively moderate compared to a run-up of costs a decade ago. "This is certainly not high by historical standards," said Sandy Baum, a College Board analyst and economics professor at Skidmore College in New York.</p>
<p>But some officials said there may be trouble ahead. State budget cuts, drops in college endowments' stock market investments and a possible falloff in donations may lead to much larger charges for students and parents next year, they warned...." College</a> tuition bills may spike, officials warn - Los Angeles Times</p>
<p>Public versus private is the real story. Privates will have a hard time raising tuition if their yields drop as a result of parents' depleted investment portfolios. For public schools that charge a fraction of what private schools charge the situation would be reversed with more applicants, higher yields and a resulting increase in pricing power for the public schools as well as the publics becoming more selective and the privates less so.</p>
<p>Why shouldn't the highly subsidized public schools become the most sought after, as they are in some other countries? Shrinking public coffers with a concurrent increase in demand could have an dramatic effect on the perceived value of public versus private.</p>
<p>I am so thankful that I am graduating this year. It is absolutely insane that colleges and universities raise will tuition regardless of the economy. It makes so little sense as well. If you don't have the money to get flat screen tvs for every single dorm, then don't; a super cool nano lab can wait, it wouldn't destroy your prestige. </p>
<p>Many people I know are considering taking a year off and work or attend a community college. It wouldn't kill colleges and universities to cut their tuition cost or keep it the same. Whatever school that does that might see a huge spike in its application and attractiveness.</p>
<p>A key issue of this election is "spreading the wealth". Perhaps part of Obama's wealth redistribution will include spreading the $billion college endowments to the less fortunate colleges. What a wonderful gift to hundreds of thousands of financially hurting students and parents ... and a sure capture of votes for Obama.</p>
<p>Greg, Obama's plans carry very fundamental flaws. The problem with college is not that the price is too high, rather it is the fact that it is to easy to get a college loan. With the government subsidizing everything in education, including student loans, many more applicants have the purchasing power required to pay $40,000 , $50,000 , and even more per year. With the government giving away cheap loans, almost anyone can take advantage of this and take out enormous debt in the effort to pay schools. If this money dried up and people had to pay out of pocket for the most part, tuition would fall through the floor. Also, I don't understand Obama's belief that everyone and their brother need to go to college. Why is it necessary to go to college if you want to be a roofer? a bartender? There are a million other jobs that don't need college level skills, yet our society makes it taboo NOT to go to college. This, along with many other factors, is driving the price of higher education sky high and the standards of education considerably lower.</p>
<p>There's a thread in one of the parents forums on: should this kid be in college?</p>
<p>Perhaps twice as many kids go to college than should resulting in a lot of wasted money, time and productivity. And yes, the economics are that high demand drives high costs.</p>
<p>I'm with you, BCEagle91
I would love to see colleges and universities post consumer protection information by law similar in some areas to what corporations do. Such as...
"If you enroll in our school, you have a 45% chance of graduating from here, and a 56% chance of graduating from any place at all."
Where are the advocates for those who took out loans to attend colleges and never graduated? These students must number in the many millions. No money back guarantees in academia. Who speaks for these folks? Particularly since student loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.
I have no respect for academia on this issue.</p>
<p>I don't know what makes bleedblue think that the government is still subsidizing lots of loans. While it is true that as recently as six years ago, student loans were "the cheapest money that you will ever borrow" this is definitely not the case now. To address his concern about why Obama thinks that we should strive to let our youth go to college - simply put, we are competing in a global economy where other nations are putting record percentages of their population through college and if we are to be competitive in the global market, we need a skilled workforce.</p>
<p>Could you quantify those record percentages? My friends from Europe tell me that their percentages are far lower than those of the United States.</p>
<p>We can let our youth go to college but what if they are unable to succeed there? Isn't that a huge waste? Yes, we need a skilled workforce but college isn't always the best place for that and for some, it may indeed be one of the worst.</p>
<p>Skilled doesn't mean college.
China and others have advanced with a very limited number of college graduates. Expansion of the college infrastructure will bring up the rear.
In the case of Ireland, with a highly educated work force, by the numbers, prosperity was dependent on a change in the tax laws, not an an improvement in educational levels.
Academia will always be looking to feather its own nest. Okay, I get it.
But for claims to being, like the TIAA-CREF ads, for the greater good?
Over the top to the point that I want to vomit.</p>
<p>is it p;ossible that the steep rise in tuition in the op is due to some extent to the drop off of college aged freshman? less customers might drive up the price in order to carry the freight? someone please comment on this correlation. O rmore generally, what might the afffect be of a drop of college freshamn? look to overseas, for example?</p>
<p>In many cases, college is just "remedial" high school. Talk to your average college student and you will see how uninformed and ill-educated they are. Even an ivy like Princeton requires a writing seminar to go over the basics of writing style and grammar. We need to improve K12 education and direct more kids to trade schools and apprenticeships.</p>
<p>As someone who is currently in college I find it laughable how some of you believe that the current job situation in the US would make it possible for someone without a college or even a technical degree to have any type of successful career. Even with simple jobs many, many, many places require you to have a degree of some type before you even think about applying there. The minimum wage in this country is appalling and is nearly impossible to make a living off of and with more and more jobs requiring an undergrad degree many professions are requiring a masters as well now. My best friend works in data entry at a play rights company and the ONLY reason she got hired was because she got a grad degree at NYU. This company won't even hire a receptionist if they didn't graduate from some prestigious school in the area like NYU or Columbia. </p>
<p>This is a trend that is happening everywhere and it makes it harder for graduates to make any type of living that doesn't involve working 60+ hours a week and still scraping by. A college degree used to mean job security and a good income, it means nothing now.</p>
<p>"As someone who is currently in college I find it laughable how some of you believe that the current job situation in the US would make it possible for someone without a college or even a technical degree to have any type of successful career."</p>
<p>The Millionaire Next Door found that your typical millionaire is far from the stereotype and that many that work rather mundane jobs and run mundane businesses are the quiet millionaires out there.</p>
<p>John Maudlin has done a similar survey over the past few months along with personal interviews for those willing to do them and he's going to come up with a book with his results next year. I think that the results will again be surprising to most. The questions on the interview were rather interesting - they covered a variety of areas. I'm guessing that there will be a surprising number of responses from those without college degrees.</p>
<p>I have a sister-in-law with an educational level that I'd say is below high-school. But she has a few paid-off properties worth probably $350K+ and enjoys a nice income from them (not in the US). This is after working near minimum-wage level jobs for a lifetime. Savings and a few wise or luck investments can gain you more than a college degree with wasteful habits.</p>
<p>Increased tuition and decreased ability to get loans - sounds like a recipe for success :/
I'm yet another student who will be changing my plans at least somewhat in order to compensate for the effect of the financial crisis.</p>
<p>There are a lot of people who don't go to college still, you guys. Don't get all freaked out that we won't have any less-skilled workers. Now, if they could earn a living wage, I'm sure more people would want to be part of that work force.</p>
<p>Pricey private colleges without huge endowments are likely to take the biggest hit. They face rising fixed costs, more demands for financial aid, and more consumer resistance to rising tuition. Their applicant pools may not shrink immediately, but their yields are likely to go down as more students and their families get out the sharp pencils and do serious comparison shopping on net cost-of-attendance once the FA offers are out.</p>
<p>As for college participation rates, the United States is currently slightly below average for OECD countries, according to statistics compiled by the OECD. New Zealand, Australia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Hungary all have significantly higher college ("tertiary Type A," i.e., 4-year post-secondary education leading to a baccalaureate degree) participation rates than the U.S. The Netherlands, Spain, the UK, and South Korea all have slightly to moderately higher participation rates than the U.S. Just as importantly, the U.S. has a relatively low level of participation in "tertiary type B" programs---those that "focus on practical, technical, or occupation skills for direct entry into the labor market." I quite agree that not everyone should go to a 4-year college, but in today's economy it's increasingly necessary to get occupational or technical skills if you want to have any realistic hope of rising above a dead-end minimum-wage job. (Of coruse, you'll always hear the anecdotal exceptions, but they're just that, exceptions). But our post-secondary educational system does a very poor job of delivering that kind of technical/occupational skills training.</p>
<p>"Of coruse, you'll always hear the anecdotal exceptions, but they're just that, exceptions"</p>
<p>As a group, we are fairly well educated. Only about one in five are not college graduates. Many of us hold advanced degrees. Eighteen percent have master's degrees, 8 percent law degrees, 6 percent medical degrees, and 6 percent Ph.D.s. (The Millionaire Next Door)</p>
<p>20 percent of millionaires in this survey sounds quite a bit more than anecdotal.</p>
<p>^ Fair enough, but what percentage of people without any college education are millionaires? And how does the median income of those without any college stack up against the median income of those with a college degree? There will always be outliers, of course, but the sheer fact that according to your own statistics 80% of millionaires have college degrees when only a little over 20% of the nation's adult population have college degrees suggests that your odds of becoming a millionaire dramatically if you do have a college degree. </p>
<p>Of course, relatively few of us will ever become millionaires, college degree or not---and for most of us that's not even the goal. Most of us will be clustered around the median income for our respective demographic, but according to the US Census the median income for college graduates is nearly double that for those with high school only.</p>