Tuition and Fees 2012-13
Tuition $43,610
Room $ 6160
Board $ 5110
Student Activity Fee $440
Total $55,620
Estimated Costs:
Books/Supplies $1300
Miscellaneous Personal Expense up to $1000
Travel Allocation up to $1500
I read an article in the Times today about Ohio State and efforts by President Gordon Gee to begin to get a handle on expenses.
Like many, I have been concerned for some time about the escalating cost of colleges and the heavy burdens of debt imposed on students, who graduate and frequently are saddled with this load of debt for many years as they start their careers. It is an unfair burden they must shoulder by trying to better their lot through education.
It’s bad enough for mega-universities like Ohio State. The “Big Three” in the Ivy League (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) have huge endowments but are still raising tuitions.
Then you have the small private universities like my alma mater, Hamilton College in Clinton NY, who for its size is well-endowed. But look at the above chart---it’s shocking. A four-year education, if you pay full fare, is over $222,000, not counting books/supplies, personal expense and travel. Hamilton is far from alone with these ballooning costs.
I think many colleges and universities have been guilty over the last twenty years of academic smugness and complacency; i.e., our standards are so high and our reputation so formidable that we don’t have to worry. Then, before they know it, costs escalate and tuitions are raised to new heights. I believe a review of costs and some hardnosed budgetary evaluations are long overdue. Each department head should be responsible for his or her bailiwick and should be required to propose a leaner meaner budget. I don’t want to rob any school of academic excellence, but you can’t convince me that some fat has not accumulated around the midriffs of most schools.
Many courses are being offered online by a variety of colleges. Surely the internet with its incredible power to reach millions of people could be a way to promulgate knowledge at a reasonable price. It is an incredible tool with ever increasing potential.
Education is the greatest benefit and asset we can give the young. Must we burden them with years of expense for something that should be a birthright? Come on, colleges and universities, put on your thinking caps, get creative and see what your brilliance can come up with to aid your students.
Education certainly, to my mind, qualifies as an inalienable right.
I recently read an opinion piece that predicted student debt will soon rock the economy like the collapse in home values and the banking crisis.
ReplyDeleteThere's going to be more and more families unable to educate their children, more students unable to obtain, under any circumstances, a college education. Some would argue this is by design, leaving an adequate, dumb ed-downed work force to handle those menial jobs nobody wants to do and an adequate supply of lesser educated to maintain our armed forces.
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