College Money Problems

By Ahmed A Albuwaidy

Have you ever thought why colleges in the United States cost so much? Plenty of students and their families might wonder what could be the main reasons of these high tuitions and fees for a college education. As you may have already discovered, paying for a higher quality education in the United States can be incredibly expensive. Being a student in an American college is a unique experience that has a significant amount of advantages. After all, we can all agree that higher education is definitely required in today's job market. Even though it has such positive points as being away from home and experiencing the beauty of freedom, the financial pressure is definitely a huge issue with most students, because they have to pay such high tuitions. In particular, those who do not receive scholarships or any form of financial aid have the hardest time money-wise. Thus, they would have to sacrifice and pay high tuitions and living expenses by themselves in order to achieve their dreams. There are common reasons that lead to high tuition in the United States, due to inflation, federal government budget cuts, colleges are getting hit harder now then ever before. These increased tuition rates have a negative impact on society since after school the majority will be in debt. Thus they cannot contribute as productively to their jobs.

Inflation is taking a large toll on the students at the college level as far as money goes. Now, as the cost of living goes up, the salaries that workers receive are going up in unison. Professors, grounds crews, and all personnel on campus and those working through it are getting more money now than ever before. While this sounds like they are ripping off college students left and right, people seeking a higher education need to realize that the cost of living is increasing too, meaning the people working for these universities are staying the same as far as how well off they are. Since the salaries of the workers are going up, the institutions for a higher education must dish out more money to them, making the tuitions higher. They have to increase the revenue in some aspect, so they now a days are doing this through rise in tuition rates countrywide. Vicki Smith, who is a writer for the Associated Press, informs that the tuition at WVU for the Fall 2012 semester has been increased by $145 for in-state students per semester and $449 for out of state and international students (Smith).

Catherine Rampell, a reporter for The New York Times, believes that the state funding cuts drive colleges to increase their tuition. With these large decreases in budgets for universities, they have to make up for the fiscal loss somehow; the way they do this is through increased tuition (Rampell). So, this makes sense from universities perspective but leads students into debt making harder for them to contribute to society. This makes them harder to have a decent life after graduation because of being worried about how to pay back all loans and not having this money for their own needs.

Another way that leads to a high tuition is that the federal government has the ability to dish out money as they please as long as they are discretionary funds. Regarding the flexibility they have with money, "Higher education usually falls under the 'discretionary spending' part of the budget - and in fact is often one of the biggest programs, if not the biggest, in the discretionary category" says Rampell. The reason that higher education gets less money is due to the fact that the government knows these schools have other ways of getting revenue, so they do not always allocate the amount of money for the higher education portion of the budget (Rampell).

As an example of how high the tuition is becoming, Richard Vedder is an economics professor at Ohio University, a director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and the author of Going Broke by Degree: Why College costs Too Much (Vedder). In The New York Times article, he said that according to the College Board in 2011, Ohio University's in-state students pay more than $17,000 a year including tuition, room, and board, which was about 6% more than the previous year (Vedder). He found out that Americans in 2009 spent an inconceivable amount of money on higher education, which was about $461 billion, this is much more than the gross domestic product of some countries like Portugal and Norway.

Students are becoming more aware of the issue and have already started taking action toward it. In some states such as California, students demonstrated in 2008 since their tuition was doubled. Vedder urges not only students, but also families to reach out to the government programs that are available for helping with college expenses. He believes that the only one who can take real action toward the rising college costs is the federal government. Vedder says, "Whereas private businesses cut prices for consumers and costs to themselves through efficiencies that increase profits and incomes, universities lack those incentives." In saying this, it shows that the universities cannot function like a business and make money, so in order to keep the money that they need to run and expand tuition rates are increasing every year.

In a nutshell, we can conclude that tuition fees have had a negative impact and continue to do so on students because this leads them to face financial pressure. Acquiring a higher education, and going forth through the classes is hard enough as it is, when money issues enter the equation this leads to an unbearable amount of stress. Lastly, these reasons stated above frustrate students and their families year after year.

Works Cited

Rampell, Catherine. "Why Tuition Has Skyrocketed at State Schools. Nytimes.com. 2 March 2012. Web. 15 Nov. 2012.

Vedder, Richard. "Why Does College Cost so Much? CNN.com. Web. CNN. Cable News Network, 02 Dec. 2011. Web. 14 Nov. 2012.

Smith, Vicki. "WVU board OK's percent tuition increases." Boston.com.June 7, 2012. Web. Dec 5, 2012.

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