The College Tuition Crisis: New ideas about how to make higher education affordable for all

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:




The College Tuition Crisis
New ideas about how to make higher education affordable for all

By Kevin Karner


Last week’s violent riots opposing tuition hikes in the UK are a stark reminder of the important role free public education plays in a commons-based society. In the United States, education has long been one of the most widely supported sectors of the commons. By the end of the 19th century, free public education through at least the elementary level was available for nearly all white American children because an educated population was considered essential to maintaining an industrialized nation. Then, thanks to the post World War II GI Bill, millions of Americans were also able to gain a college education at little cost, thanks to the largesse of American taxpayers. Likewise, access to higher education in Europe became a right for qualified students in 1953 with the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights.

But since then Europe and the United States have approached the economics of higher education in starkly different ways. Throughout Europe the modern university education is considered a cultural common accessible to all who meet the entrance requirements. In the U.S., high tuition coupled with a decline in GI benefits and a shift from student grants to loans mean universities are an increasingly enclosed commons, since many students simply cannot afford the financial demands needed to attend college.

In all of Scandinavia, tuition, room and board at all universities are completely covered by the state. In France, all students at all 82 universities pay only an annual €165 (about $225 U.S.) registration fee, on top of their books; Belgium, €500; Ireland, €900; Germany, €1,000; Holland and Italy, €1,000-1,500. In UK, the maximum tuition fee amount that could be charged was £3,145 (about $5000 U.S.) a year—including Oxford or Cambridge) until the new Conservative Party government proposed to triple that figure. Even in Canada, undergraduate students pay under $5,000 U.S. for yearly tuition, while an American student can pay anywhere between $9,000 at the least expensive public universities to $40,000 at an Ivy League school like Brown University .

The costs of receiving a college education in the United States have increased faster than inflation for the past forty years, with the most drastic increases coming in the last decade. At the University of Minnesota, where I am a student, tuition has increased 102% since 2000. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that over the last 20 years the United States has fallen to 12th among 336 developed nations in terms of 25-to-34-year-olds with college degrees. To put it in cold war terms, the Russian Federation has us beat for college grads at 55.5% compared to our 41.1%. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/college-tuition-crisis

[Billy Burnett]

1. Strange that Cuba is able to educate all applicants to higher ed, as well as foreign students. Free.

But then again, the evil Dr Castro forces education on the unwilling populace of Cuba, and ships-in some foreigners to force as well. :sarcasm:

[marmar]

2. And he makes them use free health care too.

El Diablo indeed.

[vssmith]

3. I paid for my college with no help or loans

I graduated HS in 1960 from a town on the Iron Range of Minnesota. The mine gave me and others going to college a summer job in the mine at $2.13 an hour. I was able to use the money from this job to pay for my first year of college. The next year I got a job on construction with the same result. No student could come close to doing that today.