The Higher Education Quiz

 

 

Years ago, long before the bubble burst, I would look at the annual increase in the value of our home. I, like many others, got caught up in the intoxication of the euphoria - I was making money cash over fist just by living here! Then one day it hit me - if the price of our house keeps going up, I will be rich when it comes time to sell it. One minor problem - who will have the money to buy it? In other words, what I should have seen coming long before the housing crash of 2008 was this - unsustainable.

Every now and again my wife tells me I say the words "I wonder" too much. I hear things, read things or see things about topical items and I think about them afterwards. One of the things I have thought about, wondered about for years is why the cost of higher education is so out of control. When I say out of control, I mean that the yearly increases in higher education is much higher than the cost of living increases we all experience. As with the price of my house going up year after year, so goes higher education. The end result will be the same - unsustainable.

Recently there is been quite a bit of discussion if a higher education degree is worth the cost of takes to get one. Students today are graduating with debts ranging from the thousands to tens of thousands to sometimes over a hundred thousand. Many times they are met with frustration and disappointment once they entered a very restrictive and constrictive job market. It is important that our young people today feel this huge expense they are making is a solid investment, and not just a "dry hole" which will saddle them for years if not decades. 

What really got me thinking this time was an article I recently read which stated that due to the recessed economy, many private colleges are holding down their tuition increases to somewhere between 4 and 5 percent. Others however, are still up around 8 percent. The cost of living increase this year is projected to be nowhere near that amount. So the question I ask this year is the same I ask every year - what are the cost drivers in higher education? What makes it so unique? The only question the media seems to have on this issue, is why are we  not paying more tax dollars to higher education? Somehow this gotten to be our fault, and our fault alone. 

With the CPI (which includes lots of items) averaging slightly less than 2.8% during the decade of the 2000 - 2009, it is hard to fathom why higher education goes up so steeply year after year. We all know the reasons (the cost drivers) why health care goes up faster than everything else, but education? Again, questions are asked and reasonable answers are never given.

My solution to how to fix this problem is simply this. Don't play the game the way it is presented. Change the rules. In other words, if private colleges cannot control their costs, avoid them like the plague. Use the state university system instead. If their increases are unsustainable, use the community college system. If those too are out of control, find some online, easily transferable classes to take. It is all about supply and demand. If we tell our higher education institutions that we are not going to support them anymore until they get their costs under control, one of two things will happen. They will cease to exist or they will be better stewards of the money that we (privately) or we (publicly) send them. This is a quiz they must be able to pass.