Thread: My Article on College Tuition (The Lions Chronicle)

A Higher Education, for a Higher Price

by Nick ----------------

Since the mid-1970s college tuition prices have tripled. This year increases in college pricing slowed, comparably, yet still managed to overshoot inflation, which is now around 3.6 % according to the Consumer Price Index, with public four-year colleges increasing 6.3% and public two-year schools increasing 4.1%. Excluding tobacco products and cigarettes, the price of higher education has risen faster than any goods or services in America, including medical care. Currently, in constant dollars, total spending in America by higher education institutions is $325 billion annually. The per-credit cost at UAFS is currently $175.57, up a whopping 7.1% from $169.93 in fall 2010. The increase from 2009 to 2010 is 7%, meaning 14.1% in two years was implemented in an attempt to maintain student body growth with diminishing state funding. Most colleges have similar, if not identical reasons for the increases, but can anyone say that college has gotten three times better, as prices would imply? What does this money get spent on?

When you couple with that the drop in administration ratios, it casts a pall on the prospect of growth for the student body’s true educational progress. In the 1970s, there was, perhaps one administrator per eighty-four students. By 2005, that same ratio had dropped to one for every sixty-eight students, while professional staffers were at one for every twenty-one students. Sadly, the hiring of actual teaching faculty has not seen such an increase. What happened to full-time faculty? Administrators and their staffers, a veritable army of functionaries, now outnumber them, increasing 85% and an enormous 240%, respectively. Around 190,000 administrators are currently employed, opposed to roughly 675,000 full-time educators. Seem equitable? Also add in “Other professionals”, which are non-administrative positions that serve as the “arms, ears, legs, eyes, and mouthpieces, now at 566,000 plus, that serve as a buffer zone for administrative power. Gone are the days of necessary administration/faculty cooperation. The faculty has been marginalized by the new, bulky autonomy. Adjunct faculty often replaces full-time professors, due to the administration’s belief of the fiscal advantages in doing so. I ask why, then, have the administrations of our colleges and institutions not applied that same theory to their own ranks?

It can’t be argued that it is imperative to ensure a student’s comfort, take into account certain groups of disadvantaged learners and foreign study programs, and attempt to effectively employ financial aid. On the other hand, it seems like the perception of a student has transformed from learner to consumer. The blame does not lie with any one party, though, and the staffers are just the beneficiaries of a peculiar human quirk: Students and parents have the silly notion that the more a college costs, the better it is. With that in mind, colleges raise their prices, and receive higher application rates. Higher education costs drive the demand for them, so why would they stop? This is just another example of where our own psychology works against us for the market-mentality.


This is the first article I ever attempted to write. I hope it's interesting for you guys/gals.

Don't worry, it was pretty interesting! Especially for me, seeing that I have just recently applied to several colleges and will be afflicted with the impossibly high summit that is collegiate debt. The facts that you brought up in the first paragraph were strong and made sense, but I feel like you should include where you got them from (just to avoid accusations of plagiarism, one of the many lessons I learned from my high school English teachers).

The second paragraph was kind of confusing to me. I think that you should make your point clearer with some sort of straightforward comment so that the reader can pull the facts and your commentary together.

Altogether, I find that you wrote it with a strong, personal style and for your first try, I'm impressed.