The College Recession

There is a national debt crisis, and it has nothing to do with tax cuts or pork barrel spending. A generation of American college students are graduating with up to $100,000 in student loan debt.

The cost of higher education has risen astronomically, 439 percent between 1982 and 2007, according to this article on popularmechanics.com far outstripping inflation. According to that same articles, recent information from Forbes showed that ten years ago a year of college equaled 18 percent of an average family’s yearly income; now it’s 25 percent.

As a recent graduate, it is hard to see where the money is going. I attended Clark University, a top-rated private school with tuition several times that of a state school. Clark is a small school with adequate facilities and bad food. Professors are not lavishly paid, neither are the non-union physical plant workers. Nonetheless, the school often struggles to stay in the black, relying heavily on donations to make up the difference.

Education is valuable, but how valuable? Many jobs require a college degree, but leaving the entire workforce in debt for most of their adult lives is a recipe for economic disaster. Obviously, no one is forcing people to go to college, but the country needs as many doctors, engineers, and other professionals as it can get. Somebody has to cure cancer, or build the next Space Shuttle, right?

If America is going to retain the educated citizens it needs to compete in the global environment, something has to change. Higher education is a valuable thing, both for students and the people they can help as graduates, but “value” does not equate to giving colleges a blank check: if colleges don't find a way to cut tuition, while still providing a quality education, they might just run out of students.