Student Debt: Colleges, or Country Clubs?

"Over the past thirty years, the cost of attending college has risen steadily at a rate of about six percent each year. College tuition costs have outpaced inflation and health care spending, even in periods of recession. But as student debt grows, the money that many colleges spend on administration has risen faster than the amount that goes directly to education, and colleges continue to spend money on unnecessary amenities."

"Scripps Assistant Professor of Economics Sean Flynn thinks that the increasing costs are a result of simple economics. “What I think happened is the actual costs of delivering education—the real costs like time of teachers in the classroom and renting square footage of space—really haven’t gone up that much over time. What has really gone up is the demand,” Flynn said. A college education has become increasingly important for success, so more people are demanding seats in the nation’s classrooms. This extreme demand creates a system in which colleges have zero incentive to decrease costs to students."

"Additionally, Flynn thinks that the competition engendered by the extra high demand for a college education creates an incentive to inundate a campus with what he calls “massive layers of bureaucracy.” “The scariest number I’ve seen is that in the Cal State system between 1970 and 2008 … the number of faculty only went up three percent, but the number of administrators went up 237 percent,” Flynn explains. “The entire educational system has had massive amounts of money thrown at it and most of it has gone to things that have not improved the actual educational outcomes.”

"The high-cost system has created an environment in which high levels of loans and debt are the norm. This debt brings with it two problems: First, it traps those most interested in improving their standard of living and working hard with mountains of debt. Being tied to a loan that must be repaid makes it hard for students to take jobs at non-profit organizations or go to graduate school. Instead, students are locked into unfulfilling jobs that help to pay the bills, if they can find a job at all. Second, because student loans are implicitly required for many middle class students to attend expensive schools, students from backgrounds or cultures that admonish debt are less likely to attend the most expensive — and sometimes best – schools. “The debt is definitely discouraging a lot of people from going to college,” explains Flynn. “People in society – even if they know nothing else about college – now think of it as hideously expensive. That’s got to discourage kids [who are considering college].”

"As the cost of college rises and more and more students from middle class, poor, and minority backgrounds choose not to attend elite and expensive universities, we lose out on an important part of a liberal arts education. Class diversity decreases with the rising costs of college, and students sacrifice a variety of opinions and worldviews in the classroom that can provide invaluable perspectives on class material. As we allow costs to rise and take out loans to support the extravagant luxury resorts we call schools, we simultaneously exclude huge portions of the United States from participating in our discussions, from living in our dorms, and from reaping the benefits of education."