Will Lowering Tuition Save the Future Generation?

Is receiving an honorary degree from an institution for two or more years worth being buried under thousands and thousands of dollars from loan debt? By knowing commonly used terms, many will gain a more clear understanding of this issue. Also, there are many aspects to the idea of college tuition that one may consider for example: should tuition be lowered, should tuition be raised, or should tuition be abolished? College tuition has been on a constant rise since the 1970s and with this rise birthed another entity: student loan debt. Students who are unable to pay tuition are subjected to the acceptance of loans to help them pay for their education, making loans an unwanted and reliable need. Therefore, the paper will argue that tuition should be lowered. 

Knowing the jargon that surrounds the issue, the reader should be able to be educated to understand the argument. The words that are being introduced are “need to know” words. Tuition is the amount of money that is priced for a higher education, normally used for colleges and universities. According to the Oxford Dictionary, inflation is “[…] Great or undue expansion or enlargement; increase beyond proper limits; esp. of prices, the issue of paper money.” In other words, inflation is when a price is expanded and the cost of something is made higher than the original cost. The term “spike” is a “large upward or downward movement of a price or value level in a short period”. Financial aid is any money, such as grants, loans, and scholarships, which is given to students through the government, businesses, organizations, and colleges.  

Student loans are the loans provided to students and is used as a financial aid to pay for school. And according to the government website StudentLoans.gov, a student loan is the “Money you borrow for school and must repay with interest.” The definition provided leads into one of the main problems with rising tuition, student debt. As stated by Investopedia, student debt is the “money owed on a loan taken out to pay for educational expenses. Rapidly rising college tuition costs have made student debt the only option to pay for college for many students.” In simpler terms, student debt is the money owed by the student to the government and due to spikes in college tuition prices, many student rely on loans more and more to help pay for their education.  

These terms are commonly used in discussions involving the rise of tuition. Most of these terms were used to introduce the issue when it first became identified in the 1970s. Many has formulated different reasons why college tuition has risen over the years and whether it is “good” or “bad.” 

There is no true set date of when tuition began to rise, but I believe it gradually elevated. By the 1980s, it became noticeable. The New York Times’ educational correspondent, Joseph Berger points out the rising tuition in his 1988 article for the periodical. He says that “[…] Brown University, where tuition has risen about 150 percent over 10 years.” He recognizes a study conducted by the College Board that shows “from 1981 to 1987, the cost of attending a private university increased 81 percent.” This shows that the prices did not spike “overnight,” but rose chunk by chunk. 

Going back a decade, a 1974 article from the Harvard Crimson named “Faculty Announces Raise In 1974-75 Tuition, Fees”, Harvard University’s daily newspaper, touches on tuition rise within its own school. The unknown author addresses the graduate school’s increase, showing the readers how much had been raised over the year. For example, “the 1974-75 tuition for the first two years of study at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was also raised $200, to $3400. Graduate students will continue to pay the reduced rate of $1000 per year for their third and subsequent years of residence.” The author also exhibits other Ivy League school’s tuition rise: “Yale University announced last November that total charges for 1974-75 would be raised $350 to $5350. Brown University's charges will be raised $300 next year to a total of $5130. A $350 increase at Cornell University will bring total charges there to $5030.” 

Moving on, this issue is without a specific motive to why tuition rates have risen over the years, but there are many who have reasons why. Amanda Reaume, a contributor for Credit.com (a financial news site partnered with USA TODAY), states in her USA TODAY article that “the rapidly increasing costs of an education have been blamed on a number of different factors like professors' inflated salaries, construction booms on campus, students demanding luxury amenities, increased administrative costs, availability of student loans, state funding cuts and technological changes.” Reaume shows that there is no one reason for tuition rise and shows examples of what exactly people may blame. 

One of the previously stated authors, Joseph Berger, also revealed reasons why the prices were rising in the same article above titled, “Education; College Officials Defend Sharply Rising Tuition.” Berger says “But college officials say that to keep their schools attractive they have to continue to raise tuition so that the schools can spend more on items from computer centers to recruiting more women as coaches.” He also includes a statement made by Michael O’Keefe, the “president of the Consortium for the Advancement of Private Higher Education, an association of foundations and corporations that aid higher education.” O’Keefe states “Colleges are spending more to provide things that students and their parents want and demand.” This shows us reason to why tuition was on the rise. 

The executive director of the Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, Yeh Ling-Ling, has a different reason to why college tuition has gone up in her 2010 article, “Children of Illegal Aliens Should Not Go to College and Gain Legal Status.” Ling-Ling says that the DREAM Act and illegal immigrants are to blame for the rising costs. Going into detail, the DREAM Act” reduced tuition and legal permanent residency to possibly millions of students who have been in the United States illegally.” She insinuates that by reducing the immigrants’ tuition, it is not only unfair, but it could mean high prices for the American born students. The strange factor about Ling-Ling’s argument was that she was an immigrant herself. 

With the history of rising college tuition discussed, we can move to why tuition should be lowered. One of the major problems with American high education is that it is too expensive. Often times, many students find themselves worried about how they will pay their tuition, which is either paid by loans, scholarships, grants, or “out of pocket”. College tuition has been on the rise since the 1970s and has brought many negative effects to the American society. By lowering tuition in America, student debt can be cut down. 

Pursuing this further, lowering college tuition will decrease the high rates of student debt. Student debt is when college students take on loans to help pay for their college tuition. Over time, the loans will build up even while the student is attending a college or university. By the time that student has completed four years, their loans would have built up to a large sum of money. In which some students are not able to pay. Columnist for the Collegiate Times, Lina Barkawi, says that if students do not pay or begin paying their loans back, the loans go into “default.” In her article “College costs must be lowered” she says, “student loans are supposed to help students gain an education but may have a much more negative impact if things don’t go their way.” 

Furthermore, Barkawi went into detail on the negative impacts of loans. She says: 

“Once in default, your loans may be turned over to a collection agency, you can be sued for the entire amount of your loan, your wages may be garnished (15 percent of your wage is taken away to pay off the student loans), the federal government may withhold part of your social security benefit payments, you won’t be able to receive any more federal financial aid, you may not be able to renew a professional license you hold, and on top of it all, your credit history will be forever scarred because you were unable to pay back your student loans.”  

She shows how great the consequences are when loans are taken and used for college purposes. In addition, Dr. Carlos Campo, the President of the Hispanic Education Alliance, says that “college tuition has outpaced inflation for years, and the current (jaw-dropping) $1 trillion in student debt coupled with intense pressure from a variety of sources to reduce college costs has led most of us in the academy to consider ways to enhance affordability.” This shows the reader how much college tuition has rose over the years. It passed inflation and caused $1 trillion worth of student debt in America. 

Although, there are some that may refute this argument and, possibly, say that tuition is not high enough, they must look at what will happen when tuition does go higher. The Governor of Florida, Rick Scott refuted this idea by saying “raising tuition is a tax increase. And, unfortunately, it is a tax increase that directly affects whether Floridians can achieve the American dream of earning a higher-education diploma.” He was concerned that if tuition goes higher taxes will too, but he was focused on Florida. If tuition goes higher in America, maybe taxes will too. How will higher taxes hurt Americans? According to Romina Boccia, author and a Grover M. Hermann Research Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs and Research Manager at The Heritage Foundation, “at a recent Heritage symposium on European austerity, three economists from Harvard University, the International Monetary Fund, and the American Enterprise Institute all acknowledged that tax increases can cause deep and immediate economic losses.” This means that when taxes increase, some people will have a difficult time trying to pay for college or pay off loans with a tax increase. 

Not only is high tuition a problem, but student loan debt is as well. College tuition rising over 1000% in the last thirty years (since 1978) (Mosbergen), the amount of student debt is rising just as fast. According to Halah Touryalai, “total outstanding student loan balance is $1.08 trillion, and a whopping 11.5% of it is 90+ days delinquent or in default. That’s the highest delinquency rate among all forms of debt and the only one that’s been on the rise consistently since 2003.” With student loan debt being over a trillion dollars, current and former students who struggle to pay the high tuition expenses are now struggling to pay off the loans that were accepted to help pay for their education. 

With higher educational costs and student debt at an all-time high, a financial relief is well overdue. Not only is a relief needed, but equal opportunity is needed as well. Therefore, by lowering the costs of college tuition, student loan debt will be ultimately lowered and the affordability of a higher education will rise. In her 2012 article, policy analyst, Julie Margetta Morgan, says that “75 percent of Americans say college is too expensive.”  This means that the cost of tuition was already expensive in 2012. If we view a survey from 2015 asking the same question as she did to get that answer, I am positive we would get the same answer and possibly a higher percentage.  Normally when something is too expensive, there will be people who cannot afford it.  In the article “More Students Than Ever Can't Afford To Attend Their Dream Colleges”, education reporter Peter Jacobs states “while more than three-quarters (75.5%) of students were admitted to their dream colleges, only 56.9% of those accepted ended up enrolling.” This means that these accepted students did not enroll for a reason. Jacobs gives two: high costs at the student's top choice and attractive financial aid offers elsewhere. This means that either the student’s dream college was too expensive or there was a better financial aid opportunity elsewhere. 

There are some individuals that may reject the idea of lower college tuition. They provide arguments that college tuition is not a problem, but it should be raised and that should be abolished all together.  I do understand how both arguments could be beneficial to Americans, I am not “sold” on these ideas.  Starting with college tuition is not a problem, but it should be raised.  Forbes contributor, Jeffery Dorfman believes that colleges are “underpriced”.  In Dorfman’s article “There’s No College Tuition ‘Bubble’: College Education Is Underpriced”, he implies that colleges should take after a business scheme.  He states “in most businesses, when you have such overwhelming demand for your product, you raise the price (and increase production). Many colleges, especially private ones, do not want to increase the size of their student bodies, but why would they not increase prices when they have so many prospective students desperate to attend?” With this said, Dorfman insinuates that the more students that are “desperate” to attend a certain college, that college should raise its price in tuition. Any student that is desperate to attend a college is obviously trying to attend their dream college therefore, inspired by what Peter Jacobs said, if the colleges raise the prices then those “desperate” students, who cannot afford the college, will have to go elsewhere. 

The second argument that wants to abolish college tuition all together is a good idea, but it will not work out. I do agree that getting rid of tuition would save Americans plenty of money, but I do believe that when a price goes down, another price will go up. I am not sure on what price would rise, though I believe that taxes could a rising factor. Normally, events held by colleges are free, but if tuition is wiped out then those once free events will begin to charge some type of fee. Not only that, colleges will have to rely on fundraisers and donations and funds from the state. Jon Wiener claims in his article, “It's Time to End Tuition at Public Universities-and Abolish Student Debt”, that the recent college tuition abolishment would “provide a good model for the United States.” Then he implies that the US government would spend less money on education. He says “the US government already spends lots of money on student aid. Federal spending in 2014, the College Board reports, includes $47 billion in grants, $101 billion in loans and $20 billion in tax credits.” Apparently, by abolishing tuition the government will save over $101 billion.  That is a good thing, but who is paying for college? 

With all of this being said, how will colleges go about lowering tuition and why does it need to be lowered? The evidence that will be presented will answer these questions. There are two major reasons that comes to mind why college tuition should be lowered. First, the lowering would make college affordable. Second, the lowering would lower student loan debt. By lowering the cost of college tuition in America, many students will not have to suffer as much as those that did before them. 

By lowering the cost of tuition it would make college more affordable.  Author, Munir Moon came up with multiple reasons how to lower tuition and lower student debt, by “having each bachelor's degree candidate spend two out of four years away from campus; one year as an intern or apprentice with a potential employer and a second year studying abroad and in an internship in a state capital or Washington, D.C. This approach can result in doubling college capacity (from four to two years on campus classes) thus allowing them to double their enrollment. This can result in reduced tuition by at least 40 percent, if not 50 percent.” He means to have a future bachelor’s degree student study abroad and have an internship in a state capital. Not only does this method help cut tuition in half, but it also let those students gain experience and skills in travelling, communication, leadership, and many other qualities needed in the future ahead of them. 

Additionally, by lowering college tuition it will most defiantly lower student debt. Moon also believes that the method above can reduce tuition and make college more affordable -- the real solution to cutting and ideally eliminating onerous student debt (Moon). Moon includes students enrolling in online classes is a method to lower both tuition and debt. He believes “by converting at least 20 percent of those classes to online courses we could save more than $90 billion annually. Such an approach can also free up expensive real estate on campus, improve productivity and significantly increase the size of the student population -- and with tens of thousands of additional students, system-wide tuition costs can be lowered.” This means the cutting down on expensive classes, students can have one on one conversations with the instructors, and students can save a large amount of money doing so. 

In conclusion, by lowering college tuition, many Americans will save themselves the trauma of going through loans. Due to the tuition increase, student have to rely on loans to help pay for their education. But after lowering it, the cost would not be as steep causing people not to go to loans. There are no specific factors to why college tuition has risen nor is there a specific time when tuition rises. Regardless of other arguments saying another way is more efficient, I still support the lowering of college tuition costs because it ensures the lowering of student debt and assures affordability to students. I hope that this motivates not only students but many others to become more active in college costs and fight to lower college tuition. This is in the interest of the future generations of college students in America because it will eliminate high tuition costs and lower debt.   

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Bibliography 

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