College Costs Keep Rising

David Diaz


An article by Tamar Lewin in the New York Times called “College Costs Keep Rising, Reports Said” gives various reasons for the exponential increase in college tuition. The main culprit for this increase, according to Lewin, is the current state of the economy. However, Lewin does not account for the increase in college tuition during economic prosperity in the early part of this century.

Lewin states that the government, particularly the state government, subsidizes colleges. This works great when the government has the money to put into the education system, but when the government is in debt, funding for education is one of the first items that is cut. This forces colleges to find money elsewhere in order to satisfy their budget, and the only other place to find money is the students. In other words, colleges are forced to increase the cost of tuition in order to compensate for the lack of funding provided by the government.

Lewin makes a valid point, except that college tuition has continued to increase through both economic recession and prosperity. If Lewin’s model were completely correct, than tuition should have either remained the same or decreased during economic prosperity. On the contrary, tuition continued to rise through both recession and prosperity, meaning that Lewin did not account for some factors. The factors that Lewin left out were inflation and the growth of colleges. First, inflation has been present in the United States during both recession and prosperity. It causes the price of living to increase. This basically means that inflation causes the price of everything to increase including a college education. Second, more people attend colleges every year. This implies that colleges must expand to accommodate more people. Basically, colleges have to build new buildings every year to provide enough housing, food, and education as well as hire more faculty to service the new buildings and teach the new students. Essentially, colleges must spend more money every year to provide enough space for the influx of students. The extra spending each year is then multiplied by the increase of cost due to inflation. Because of inflation and need for colleges to increase spending every year, the cost of colleges increases every year and the debt is passed on to the students.

Although Lewin makes an extremely valid point in that the poor economy has caused governments to reduce funding for education. This causes colleges to pass the cost of education on to the students by means of increasing tuition. However, Lewin does not mention that colleges spend more money each year due to inflation and the need to expand. With the cost of colleges increasing and the government’s capacity to subsidize colleges decreasing, tuition increases can be expected for a long time to come.