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Why is college getting so expensive?

Colleges, nowadays, are becoming incredibly expensive. This may seem like college is not within certain people's reach #college

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Kim’s Answer

Really, really good question! I just did an inflation adjusted calculation for my first semester of school at a 4-yr public university in Texas (13 hrs: $323 in fall of 1979) and today's cost should be only $1084!! I recently returned to school, and was shocked by the prices. However, it seems that whatever type of problem a student might encounter, the school has resources to help! This includes all sorts of study assistance, counseling for personal problems, an awesome career placement center (it even has clothes you can borrow for interviews!), an attorney to help students with legal problems, video rooms to make or rehearse presentations, etc. Whatever resources you could conceivably need, the school has them. The school also seems a lot more "top-heavy" in administrative personnel. Where we had one Dean over many programs, this school seems to have separate Deans for everything!


What is sad is that while the price has skyrocketed, so has the use of "adjunct" faculty. They get paid per class that they teach, and are not truly "employees" of the university. And what they get paid is not enough for them to live on. New faculty often start out this way, but there are also a lot of professionals who use this as their side gig.


I don't know where it will end.


If you are concerned about becoming overly indebted and wondering whether or not it will pay off in the long run, I encourage you to consider junior college, military service, or an employer who offers tuition assistance.


I wish you the best!
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Veronica’s Answer

This one hit home for me. I technically couldn’t afford college. I was paying for it without help. I had scholarships and grants and student loans and still had to pull out a payment plan for the rest. When you come from less money, they limit the student loans you can receive because they want you to be able to pay them back. It becomes a mountain of debt without this limit and, in the end, I’m glad my school did this. At the time, I was paying a little over 1300 per month to stay in school on top of my other bills. I was drowning and had multiple months long periods where I couldn’t feed myself. I was working so hard to pay for my bills and I always put my school first because I knew it would be more beneficial to me in the future. I lost friends, I missed out on all the fun that college had to offer and I was so stressed that I was losing sleep.
It’s not like that for everyone, but when you have NO parental help and they won’t even allow you to put them on your financial aid packet, the amount of aid you are given is practically nothing. That being said, my first roommate got so many scholarships, grants and student loans that she had income from them so that she didn’t have to work.
The college experience is not the same for everyone and that’s what makes it prestigious. If everyone had a bachelors degree, the new prestige would be masters degrees. I think we’re heading toward that right now, honestly. If everyone had masters degrees, the PhD would be the new prestige. It’s all about perceived power.
People with high school diplomas are already being left behind. There used to be a time when high school diplomas were prestigious.
I truly think that’s what it is: perceived power or prestige. People are always trying to outshine everyone else and how can they do that if it’s so widely accessible?
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