Tuesday, June 16, 2015

June 16th: Getting College Bang For Your Buck

As we cross the 50 yard line in June, high school graduations settle into the rearview mirror, and families begin to turn their attention to the next big adventure. This fall, hundreds of thousands of freshmen will descend upon colleges and universities across the country to begin an academic journey that is just the beginning of a very exciting four (give or take) years.

Yet, as the excitement of admissions letters and new t-shirts with school names emblazoned across the front wears off, the reality sinks in: college is expensive. Like, REALLY expensive. In fact, college tuition costs are rising at alarming rates from year to year, leaving many scratching their heads as to how to make the finances work.

In-state costs for public schools are sitting squarely at or around the $10,000 mark, with costs rising from year to year. You want to go out of state? You should expect a doubling of that number.

At the same time that parents and teens begin to scramble to come up with lunch money, candidates for president have begun to discuss the possibility of education subsidies, giving help to those who are willing to take their education to the next level. As 2016 approaches, it appears as though this will be an issue both in the Obama administration as well as in the debate between the Republicans and Hillary...errr...I mean the Democrats.

One such candidate, Chris Christie, just gave his two cents on the subject (although two cents won’t cover much). In a response to a democratic push to create debt-free graduates, Christie said “if college graduates are going to reap the greater economic rewards and opportunities of earning a degree, then it seems fair for them to support the cost of the education they’re receiving.”

On this front, Christie makes a very sound argument. A college graduate is going to receive opportunities and experiences that those without an education could only dream of, and thus should have to pay the cost of such an experience. This combats the notion that the government should help students pay for college. In that regard, his view is quite reasonable.

A much better argument for all sides of the argument is to take one step back and reevaluate whether or not the cost of tuition is at an appropriate level to begin with. As an alumnus of Indiana University, I was responsible for over $30,000 per year (before scholarships). What exactly does $120,000 per student over the course of a four year degree get them? Where does that money go?

While there is some level of transparency, students generally have to work pretty hard to see a full breakdown of how their tuition dollars are allocated. It isn’t as simple as paying for a student’s own professors’ salaries and the dorms and food that they utilize. In most cases, that money is spent as a collective unit, going into a larger pool to work toward the university’s general upkeep.

Let’s look at an example. Student A lives in a dorm that was built in 1940, and has, over the last 75 years, maintained its status as a monument to college living, receiving updates periodically, but rarely seeing an overhaul of the amenities. Central air conditioning is laughable, while communal showers are old and dank. At the same time, across campus, Student B is living in the brand new dorm, with gorgeous new carpeting, clean and unused furniture, and a new cafeteria in the basement that serves kale and quinoa and all sorts of other hipster foods that liberal college students claim to enjoy. Yet, as a general rule, the two are paying the same tuition costs.

Let’s look at a more academic example: students in the Journalism program vs. students in the English department. Both are paying the same amount of money, and both are receiving the same degrees from the College of Arts and Sciences, but one is receiving top of the line resources and educators, while the other trails behind in the field. These two majors can be swapped out for any two programs, depending on the school and level of focus. The bottom line is: with standardize tuition costs, you aren’t paying for the cost of YOUR education so much as you’re paying for the cost of running the school as a whole, an idea that I think most Republicans will have trouble wrapping their heads around.

As we begin the process of reevaluating the cost of a college education, we need to look in a new direction. Rather than finding ways for students to come up with 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars, we should instead be looking at exactly where that money goes, and attempt to find ways that the government can help fund the upkeep of the school, leaving students to pay for the academic resources they actually use. While Governor Christie’s approach is valid, it is a sound opinion based on a failed model.

The high cost of college is, in and of itself, a learning opportunity. Students learn to budget, to make decisions about what they can and cannot afford, and to make smart choices about how to most responsibly attain their goals. Yet, when students are faced with no good options because the cost of an education has gotten so out of control, we are handicapping the future of America, failing to allow our next generation to reach it’s true potential.

Rather than finding ways to help students fund an education that costs too much to begin with, the government would get far more bang for their buck if they attempted to help pay for the actual infrastructure and amenities themselves, and let students cover their own cost-of-education, rather than forcing students to pay those top dollars and then struggle to figure out how to pay.

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