College Is Too Expensive
At my school we have a twenty minute period every Wednesday designed to educate and prepare for College and Post-Secondary education. In the process of my school trying to better their students for college and turn them on idea of college. I have taken an interest in the finances that it takes to make it through college. Then I realized how deeply flawed the financial side of American higher education really is. In order to get more people to go to a higher education that the price of college at american universities needs to be heavily reduced. I will prove this thesis using four points, first the rise in price of college, next statistics of us college debt, after that the bloat in administrative positions, and finally I’ll finish with how we can fix the problem.
According to data from the U.S Labor Department the price index for college has grown nearly 500% since 1982. To put this into perspective the overall consumer price index has only risen about 115% since 1982. Author Gordon Wadsworth in his 2007book The College Trap said “…if the cost of college tuition was $10,000 in 1986, it would now cost the same student over $21,500 if education had increased as much as the average inflation rate but instead education is $59,800 or over 2 ? times the inflation rate.” Some would be led to believe that all this inflation on college would scare away people from college and it does for some but other charge in and get stuck with whopping amounts of student loan debt.
A Nerdwallet study done by staff writer Teddy Nykiel states “The average amount of Student loans debt for a 2015 college graduate is $30,100.” Straight out of school, college grads make a median pay of $40,127 according to the same 2017 Nerdwallet study.Now by those figures alone some would be led to believe that it should only take a few years to repay those pesky student loans, but a recent federal study by the U.S Labor Department says that it takes the average college grad 21 years to pay off a Bachelors degree worth of student loans.Now imagine living under 21 years of pressure while trying to raise a family with only a college degree to show for it. Some say colleges in the U.
S are risingprices because students are willing to pay for it. But that is not true, the real reason is the administrative bloat of upper management at universities. “Management positions have increased twice as fast as other jobs at universities” According to a 2017 Delta Cost Study. Upper Management account for more than on average 25% of all campus jobs. Almost all of those positions have full medical and dental insurance, as well as many other benefits. The main thing that needs to happen to reduce prices of college is to reduce the amount of positions at universities.
For example at the University of Washington in response to the state’s 2009 budget crisis, The UW cut their budget by 73 million dollars. They managed to do this by Cutting the amount of managerial and support positions by 700 people. Said staff writer Katherine Long in a 2014 Seattle Times article. Some may say “jeez seven hundred thats a lot of people to just cut.” The best thing about that is it would affect the students very little most of those positions were not even teaching positions. Now maybe that class did persuade some people into seriously considering college, but for me it just made me realize how broken the american college system is.
Today I talked about four points. The first being first the rise in price of college, next statistics of us college debt, then the bloat in administrative positions, and finally how we can fix this. I hope after reading this essay today you are more educated on the finances and debt statistic that goes with being an american college student. What you do with this is your choice, I would advise you to take a serious look at college and the expenses it takes before just going to college because “That is what everyone else is doing.”
