Is getting a college education becoming too expensive for the average college student?

Answer 1

Yes it is getting far too expensive for the average college student nowadays. The cost is rising much faster than inflation, even faster than health care costs, which unilaterally tend to have the highest jumps in expenses.

Schools are doing it for logistic reasons, as they have to match the supply with this constant demand by hiring new teachers and building new facilities. But schools also foolishly spend their money on frivolous items that don't really belong in the educational world. I mean seriously, did my school, TxState, really need an Olympic sized swimming pool for the one class of students that take it each semester, or to replace all their toilets with motion sensor toilets, or to spend a few million dollars on renovating the recreation center. All of this when there's a supposed problem with finding the proper amount of faculty for certain classes.

Call me cynical if you must, but with me being educated in Finance and having seen trends in all manners of markets, I also tend to believe that the schools are purposely pricing their tuition as high as the market can bear it. The schools know that they're in the best time of their field's history, as the work force now pretty much unanimously demands at least a Bachelors in order to even compete in any career. With this constant demand, the schools know that they can price things higher than before and still have a sell-out number of students, because if some student either won't pay this high price or simply can't afford to pay it, someone else will easily take their spot.

And as for someone else's comment about it being Ronald Reagan's fault for cutting down the funds, don't blame him, blame the current American homeowners who constantly lobby for these things, all while of course still wanting a quality education for their children. As my Finance professor one time brilliantly said, "your mommy and daddy went to school having to pay very little tuition, thanks to the all the new funding the universities were receiving from the taxes of then homeowners. But as soon as they graduated and became homeowners themselves what do they do, they vote to decrease their own home taxes as much as possible every year and leave all of you current students high and dry". Interesting stuff to think.

Answer 2

I don't know, my tuition was only raised about 8%/year while in school... compounded of course. So yes, I think it is getting extremely difficult for most students to pay for college.

Likewise, the person that said the Iraq money is taking from education, incorrect. Get it right, it isnt taking from education funds, its just adding to our near 9 trillion dollar deficit ;) lol

Answer 3

My personal belief is that college is quickly becoming a massive rip-off in most cases. You spend a large portion of your time and money to go and get some cookie cutter education, which more often then not ends up being you essentially teaching yourself, just so you have a piece of paper that's supposed to qualify you for some job, which as you can probably tell is very rarely the case.

There's also too much pressure on kids when they're young to choose their entire future and you end up getting a lot of people who go to college only to wind up doing something that makes them miserable for the rest of their lives.

I'd personally like to see more opportunities for, and recognition of, apprenticeships. I'd rather get payed minimum wage getting my feet wet rather than blowing my life savings on a bunch of theory and "what if."

Not that college is bad, I just think that there's too much emphasis on it being "the way" and in many cases it could use some fine tuning in its execution.

All just my opinion of course...

Answer 4

Yes college is getting to expensive.

Answer 5

Yes.

You can thank Ronald Reagan for that. The first thing he did when he became president was slash education funding.

Before Reagan, you could get a college education for a few thousand dollars a year.

Answer 6

confident it is somewhat high priced ... yet you ought to continually evaluate Instate Univs that keep you lots plus ypu are closer to kin. enormously much each and every state has magnificent ranked univs. for an entire source of univs examine the less than source.

Answer 7

yes, but it's also more necessary then ever for a college degree to get a good job with potential to grow.