Talk:College tuition in the United States

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.101.40.113 (talk) 16:31, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The closing college door

The widespread alarm over "the closing college door" during the 1950s, leading to the National Defense Student Loan Act,^[1] then attending and paying for MIT during the 1960s rush of tuition hikes, were formative experiences for me. Having endured those times, I never expected anything so difficult again. Yet it was so, when our two sons attended research universities (not MIT) during the 1980s and 1990s. The enormous time and expense to create a research university limits the supply of such services, which is far outpaced by the demand for them. Barring a depression of even greater harshness than the 1930s, the trends seen since World War II may well continue for another 50 years or more.

Left out of the original version of this article is any mention of loans and scholarships, particularly the "need-based" scholarships that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Someone who knows these topics better than I should undertake a summary. It is hoped that writers on this topic will deal with the reluctance of anyone ingrained in our culture to be labeled as a beggar.

^ See National Defense Education Act, 1958, work of Carl D. Perkins from the Seventh Congressional District of Kentucky.

Craig Bolon 23:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Great work, Craig! Just copyedited the article a bit — hope you don't mind. jareha ^(comments) 00:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In state vs out of state

Can we include something about in-state tuition being cheaper than out-of-state tuition? It often has a lot of crence over where students go.

First Graph

As a constructive comment, I think the first graph on this page would be much more illustrative if it included only inflation adjusted lines and was not on a logaritmic scale. It would be less cluttered and convey with full force the fact that the "real" price of education is increasing very quickly over time.

Is this first graph correct? The Y scale is in orders of magnitue. I would expect the graph to dramatically flatten.

WHY?

Some discussion of why the cost of a college education is rising so quickly would be a very welcome addition to this article! -Toptomcat 18:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

College loans cause of inflation???

Just a theory of mine although I haven't tried statistically correlating Dept. of Education figures with annual tuition increases. I reckon that gov't loans that were supposed to "help" have done the opposite and ended up subsidizing the academic "industry." Essentially, colleges are jacking up tuition because they know that students can take out large loans to pay for it. Our gov't then raises loan amounts to "help" with rising tuition costs, but of course, colleges know this and so jack up tuition again. It's essentially turned into a fookin mess that drives Americans deeply into debt. If gov't cut loans, colleges would be forced to cut tuition / pay / expenditures / etc., but colleges have turned into such huge money making businesses and proliferated greatly, meh. I think it's probably just another instance of gov't "assistance" backfiring, but I could be wrong of course - just a simple theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.116.105.117 (talk) 21:15, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reprise

Since the article was created, there has been little time to revisit it. Mostly the comments seem helpful and appropriate, including a notice seeking wider perspective. It turned out to be difficult to obtain long-term data outside the United States; Toronto was the only exception. However, the issue or rising college tuition might not have a much wider perspective. Among the industrialized nations, the United States stands out for allowing its educational economy to be dominated by elite, private institutions and for allowing those institutions to charge all the market will bear. Graphs are logarithmic because data trends are exponential. Inflation adjustment needs to be explained by showing uninflated trends, because there is controversy as to an appropriate deflator and because inflation is enormously variable by country; it was somewhat a stretch to use the US CPI as a deflator for Toronto. The out-of-state tuitions are not as significant because of the social role of state colleges in supporting students from the sponsoring state. In recent years out-of-state tuitions have become badly distorted as states try to use them as money trees. The "why" of tuition increases is indeed interesting. To start with, one would probably need candid testimony from two or more generations of finance officers at elite, private colleges. It is fairly obvious that many less prestigious colleges are using elite institutions as benchmarks and finance floors. They don't carry the burdens of research universities yet have been able to charge nearly the same prices. What the article indicates is that price trends at private institutions appear to be a very long-term trend, stretching over more than six decades, and that public institutions appear to have different, perhaps more socially responsive, long-term trends. Recent trends, however, suggest public institutions may be moving toward the rates of price increases at private institutions. -- September 28, 2007

Propose move to College tuition in the United States

I think the US and Canada are the only two countries to use the term "tuition" for college fees. Thus it should be under a new title. --Liface (talk) 10:12, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. Entitling the page "College tuition" without specifying that it only pertains to the United States is U.S.-centric and misleading for the majority of readers. (Amos True (talk) 00:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC))[reply]

I am from Australia and I have to mention that this page isn't actually about Tuition fees (in the US), it is about the growth of tution fees and the inflationary trends in student living costs. It tells me nothing about what tuition fees actually are, why colleges have tuition fees, when tuition fees were instituted, what is the average cost of tuition (no fancy graphs please - just plain English), how people pay for tuition, college funds, comparison between tuition fees in the U.S. and other forms of higher education payment in other countries and the differences in cost between, say, a science program to an arts program to a law program. In Australia we pay between $5000 and $9000 per year to go to university. How does that compare to fees in the U.S? I don't know. Because no-one thought that it was relevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.212.89 (talk) 00:37, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Changed text to accurately reflect numbers that appear on graphic of college tuition vs. helath care vs cost of living inflation. College tuition can be clearly seen to be 950% of 1978 cost of living dollars, but the text said "nearly 800%". Also, cost of living has gone up 300% but the chart clearly shows 250%. Finally the derived relationship of tuition increase relative to cost of living increase is therefore closer to 4 times and not the three times stated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.136.199 (talk) 09:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well intentioned article is out of date

While the information presented is accurate, I believe it is misleading in light of new studies by Jane Wellman, sponsored by the Lumina Foundation. Yes, the price (what students pay in Tuition & Fees) has doubled the rate of inflation, but for public institutions, this is replacing the monies lost due to cuts in state appropriation support. The costs (what colleges spend) has actually been flat in the 18 year period of study (1987 - 2005) Please see www.deltaproject.org for extensive information on this topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.60.121.1 (talk) 20:25, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Student Loans

This section of the article seems to be written in highly emotive language for instance "Students today may be an exploited minority, being taken economic advantage of because they lack the historical perspective to appreciate the inequity. In any case, questions may be raised about placing young adults, who ought to be seen as be agents of change and progress, into society already burdened with debt and enmeshed in the status quo because students are often forced to take jobs they'd rather not have immediately after graduation to repay loan debts."

I would think this needs to be kept to the facts of the costs of student fees compared to ability to pay and funding - currently is sounds like a political speech.

Joss (talk) 19:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

An idea for changing the name of the article

Since the note at top says "The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (June 2007)", maybe the article could be renamed:

College tuition in North America.

It apparently includes mostly USA and Canada figures.

Misty MH (talk) 22:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Request assistance here (update)

Nasnema reverted edits I made to this page just now, claiming that sources were not cited, but it would appear that sources were cited.

Could someone please look into this and determine whether this is correct --or why the sources cited did not qualify as legitimate here?

Being new to this make it all the harder, but I would seem to have cited my sources here.

I thought I followed the Wikipedia rules here -- I have heard rumors of childish arguments on this website, and if 'Nasnema' is serious with what he/she said, then this makes a good case that I should not join Wikipedia.!

!

I followed the rules, and yet he/she deleted my posts, falsely claiming that I did not cite my sources

(update)

(update + place it on the right part of page --- new stuff at bottom)

-- Since posting this, I 'canvassed' and got help from others --and I think that 'Nasnema' looks like he/she will calm down and be a 'good' editor -- On my honour, I apologise for canvassing -- but being a bit new, I did not think about going to the 'Report Vandalism' page, and this talk page is not monitored very much. OK, that is all - thank you all for your help here. Have a good day. Ta!71.101.40.113 (talk) 19:43, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

[1] See National Defense Education Act, 1958, work of Carl D. Perkins from the Seventh Congressional District of Kentucky.

[1]