University education has been going up at 10%/year for decades now. Way above inflation.
It is clear that it is going on an internal dynamic until those dynamics finally conflict with reality. That collision will be..painful. Given the crushing levels of student debt in this country it may happen sooner rather than later.
If I were in charge, I'd institute a simple change. Improve financial aid. Beef up the federal loan guarantees. Only make either available at schools whose tuition was in the bottom 70% when you applied. With that incentive, I think that a lot of schools would find ways to reduce tuitions towards what (inflation adjusted) was more than sufficient several decades ago.
> University education has been going up at 10%/year for decades now.
Accounting for inflation and number of students, university budgets have not been going up 10%/year; at some universities, the real per-student cost of higher education has actually been declining. What's been going up at 10%/year is the tuition "sticker price" for students who receive no scholarships or need-based aid. But this is offset by two contrary trends: 1) a decrease in the percentage of students who are actually paying the sticker price, especially at private universities; and 2) large decreases in state funding for public universities.
Consider the University of California system (all figures below in 2012 dollars). In 1990, it spent $21,000 per student (dividing its total budget by its total enrollment). Today it spends $16,500 per student--- a decrease in the cost of education of about 25%. Tuition has nonetheless gone up, because the state-funded portion of its budget has declined even faster: from $16,000 per student in 1990 to $9,500 per student today, and possibly to $8,500 per student in the coming year. As a result, the student-funded portion has risen from $5,000 to $7,000 and soon $8,000 per student on average (with a sticker price a bit over double that).
If you want the UC system to be able to run on tuitions that were sufficient in 1990, you'd have to also return state funding to what it was in 1990...
It is clear that it is going on an internal dynamic until those dynamics finally conflict with reality. That collision will be..painful. Given the crushing levels of student debt in this country it may happen sooner rather than later.
If I were in charge, I'd institute a simple change. Improve financial aid. Beef up the federal loan guarantees. Only make either available at schools whose tuition was in the bottom 70% when you applied. With that incentive, I think that a lot of schools would find ways to reduce tuitions towards what (inflation adjusted) was more than sufficient several decades ago.