You are missing half the equation.
College was affordable until consumer demand and employee controlled management drove up costs.
Mom and Dad SAY they want Junior to work his way through school like they did, but in reality, they sent their kids to schools with resort like amenities, as well as cable TV, computer labs and countless other fixed costs that a changing society and evolving campus competitive in recruiting has to provide. Schools that have attempted to control costs and offer traditional college settings have suffered catastrophic tuition losses. TU is in this category until Stead built out the campus.
Faculty, who hijacked administration starting in the 1970’s, began refusing to retire and in some cases also refusing to teach starting in the 1980’s. Now, it’s not unheard of for faculty to teach into their 80’s, some without minimum course loads. They voted themselves absurd salary and employee benefits, particularly for administrators, that remain intact today. If you get sticker shock looking at a college tuition advertisement, mosey over to the faculty recruitment webpage and you’ll see pension benefits far above the private sector. 85% of best 9 month contract for life, 18% employer contribution after 5% employee contribution, etc. It’s harder to find but plenty of schools offering no contribution no deductible $5 co pay health insurance for life etc.
So around 1990, schools had to come up with two massive overhead issues unseen in their centuries long industry before that time. Most handled the change in business model poorly. 1) Build out cable tv for the dorms, modernize the telephone systems, remove the asbestos, build the computer lab, while still funding 12th-20th century functions like the library. 2). Massive increases in employee benefits costs. Health care went up. Pensions went up. Salaries went up. Employees began living and working longer and workplace culture insisted they be retained. With the exception of the computer lab and library, projects that donors would not support. So they got passed on to state legislatures and consumers. As I stated elsewhere recently, the one cardinal rule of government is you never underestimate and never under appreciate the American middle class. So government did what it does to respond to the changes on campus, the changes in consumer expectation. They offered supplemental appropriations and bond issues but you can’t tax and spend your way out of that problem nor is it a good policy even if you could. They made students put skin in the game. So tuition went up, loan thresholds went up, and then the campus saw what the market would yield and went crazy.
To the extent there is blood on the hands of the academy, it is most culpable in tolerating social beliefs that’s some schools are more valuable than others and the quality of education varies widely. For the most part, in the Top 250, it doesn’t. The only variable is student quality and credential perception. The schools have leveraged parental fears over credential perception to make billions and they should be ashamed. The first step in controlling the drunken rager of spending on campus is admitting that any degree is valuable and most are valued roughly the same. And that was true in the bygone era when college was affordable. Anyone with a college education from any institution was a valued asset in the marketplace. We need to get back to that, instead of Cleta sitting in her cubicle doing data entry with a Masters degree thumbtacked to her “wall” spending 30% of her salary paying out post tax dollars back to the federal government in a futile attempt to pay back an uncollectible student loan, all so faculty have plenty of cash to fully fund their viagra.
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