Well written brief historical overview. Thank you for posting this link.
Fascinating how an attempt to make college attendance more equitable and to increase the number of kids who could afford to go to college created a whole new set of financial challenges!
Interesting article, but the historic timeline is way off. Federal Student loans first became available in 1958, with the National Defense Education Act, which launched the program which later came to be known as Perkins loans. That was followed by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which authorized most federal student financial aid programs, including the Educational Opportunity Grant Program and the Guaranteed Student Loan Program. The 1972 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act cited in the article was exactly that – a reauthorization of programs that had been established earlier See http://www.finaid.org/educators/history.phtml for a good history.
I guess I know I’m getting old when I read articles claiming that the things I remember from my youth didn’t yet exist. Fortunately, in this case my memory was correct.
Yes college was cheaper back in the day, and yes it was possible for kids to earn enough to work their way through… but needy students were also getting federally-backed grants and loans back then too.
@calmom
Reading and viewing more historical detail @ https://lookingback.luminafoundation.org/ has convinced me that solutions cannot be found if we are chasing the constantly increasing cost structure of higher education as it exist in the US today.
From the cited Washington Post article: “By 1985, college competition for applicants also meant extraordinary investments in facilities, services and need-based financial aid that would be attractive to a new generation of college-bound high school seniors.”
It appears that competition over the food choices and athletic facilities are adding significantly to the total cost of universities. They are competing with eye catching dormitories which offer every convenience. Add to this the increasing cost of PhD’s in the STEM fields with the required laboratory costs and things are clearly out of hand. Do all universities have to compete with the $1,000,000,000 times X endowments of many wealthier universities to be able to enroll some paying students? What facilities are actually required for a first class education? Should we house some students at Disneyland and build barracks for the other students at a reduced rate?
I live in a very rural part of America where we can still cook our own oatmeal (perhaps in a microwave). When visiting my more urban friends in higher income neighborhoods, I see $10 boxes of designer cereals, espresso coffee machines and hear about their financial stresses as they drive off in $50,000 vehicles and struggle to pay tens of thousands more to cover student debts. Are we looking for a first class education or are we on a cruise ship to the Bahamas?
Is poor old Walt Disney at fault? Have we been sold a bill of goods?
In the olden days of economics we used to call education a “merit” good. That means we all benefit when our neighbors children are also well educated?
That was when the gains of economic growth were widely distributed, so that people could think in positive-sum terms. Now, the gains of economic growth largely go to the top 1%, so 99% feel like they are looking at a zero- or negative-sum game, where one person’s gain means another’s loss.
Well, here’s the problem with the WaPo article – I think it is correct as to general trends, but colleges in the 60’s were not nearly as spartan as it suggests. For example, when I was in school (at a large state U campus) – there were reasonable amenities on campus for student entertainment. For example, we had a bowling alley on campus. There was a reasonable array of food options among the various housing complexes. I never heard of the concept of a “forced triple” – there wasn’t really a significant difference between the dorm rooms we had and the dorm rooms my kids had, except for the evolution of the telephone & the internet.
The democratization of college education --students from poor and working class families going to college – goes back to the post war GI Bill. I think what has changed is the shift from widespread acceptance of public universities to increasing focus on private college and universities, and I don’t think that back in the 60s or 70’s there was any such thing as guaranteed full-need financial aid – I think that some students at private colleges were on scholarship, and some weren’t, and that the private colleges gave scholarships on a combined merit/need basis. Also the whole ranking thing, which has been a big driver toward private education.
I guess I need to either buy waPo subscription or wait a few days. I couldn’t read it.
@thumper1 or clear your cookies/browsing history.
@Thumper1 If you have amazon prime, you can get 6 months wapo online subscription for free, after that I think it’s $3.99/mo
One thing it doesn’t mention is the prevalence of the “lottery scholarships” in some states. (I’m not sure how many states have these.) I live in such a state, and the scholarships did increase the abilities of students to afford college - at first. But what has happened over the years is that the colleges realized that the demand for their services was now larger, so they increased tuition. And, to confound the problem, many kids only went to college for a year or two with the scholarships, then dropped out because they could no longer afford it, which only increased their loan burdens. I don’t have a solution, but perhaps colleges need to look at awarding these scholarships on tighter standards and adding in a degree of “ability to pay” to stretch the state’s investment.
@thumper1 hold down the link and choose “open in incognito tab”
@thumper1 Besides these good suggestions by @suzyQ7, @Mwfan1921, @ordinarylives, you could also use a) a different browser on your device; or b) a browser on another device (but don’t log in or at least don’t log into the same account on that browser).
I graduated from a private university 24 years ago. This college has kept its enrollment the close to the same for 40-50 years. The variation has probably been less than 7-8%. I have gone back to campus over the years and seen all the work done and new buildings. It amazes me how did the college function 30 years ago with so much less? I am sure competition has driven this spending. Sadly the increased COA basically puts it out of reach for my D19 who could get in.