A Crisis of Affordability: How Our Public Colleges Are Turning into Gated Communities for the Wealthy

By Andy Kroll, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 3, 2009.

The longer this crisis continues, the more our four-year public and private colleges are likely to be transformed into "gated communities of higher education" (in the phrase of Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity) and engines of inequality. Meanwhile, for those priced out of the four-year college market, the job of education will be left to public community colleges with fast growing student bodies, the least funding, and the fewest class offerings, as well as overcrowded classrooms and faculties stretched to the breaking point.

How did college, once seen as an increasingly democratic path to advancement, become so expensive?

A Squeeze Play in Higher Education

At the heart of the modern American Dream has been access to affordable higher education. The G.I. Bill, passed in 1944, helped instill this belief by giving returning World War II veterans unprecedented amounts of financial aid for college and spurring one of the most prosperous eras in the past century.

In 1972, the federal government broke new educational ground by creating the non-repayable Pell Grant, awarded solely on the basis of a student's income and the amount of money his or her family could contribute to college costs. The Pell Grant advanced what the G.I. Bill had begun, greatly expanding access to colleges and universities for low-income individuals and families who otherwise couldn't afford it. From the later 1970s on, however, the access promised by the G.I. Bill and the Pell Grant has slowly slipped away.

Published in 2008 before the full force of the economic meltdown had hit, the "Measuring Up 2008" report graded states on the affordability of their colleges and universities based on the percentage of family income needed to pay for college, strategies available to increase affordability, and how much loan debt students take on. The result? It gave failing grades to a whopping 49 of the 50 states. With a "C-," California was the sole exception.

Colleges and universities have also undergone a dramatic shift in the kinds of financial aid they give out. Grants have been largely replaced by student loans issued by governments and private lenders. In the decade between the 1997-1998 and 2007-2008 academic years, student loans more than doubled -- from $41 billion to $85 billion -- and the number of students taking out those loans soared from 4,100,000 to 6,111,000, according to "Measuring Up 2008."

Between the 1992-1993 and 2003-2004 academic years, student borrowing rose by 89%, from an average of $3,884 to $7,336 per year. Meanwhile, grant aid lagged, increasing only 57% from $3,545 per year to $5,565, while the Pell Grant lost much of its purchasing power: In 1979, it paid for 75% of the cost of attending a four-year public college or university; today, only about 30%.

As with the Michigan Alternative Student Loan Program, state governments, facing budget deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have only deepened the affordability crisis by slashing or suspending lending programs. At the same time, hard-pressed public and private colleges are raising tuition costs.

Not surprisingly, hardest hit by the crisis are those who can least afford college to begin with, low-income families for whom the financial burden of education has increased fastest. According to "Measuring Up 2008," the lower-middle class and lowest income groups have seen the largest increases in percentages of income needed to pay college costs -- more than three to four times the increases experienced by higher income groups.

Even as access to college is dwindling, opinion polls indicate that more Americans believe a college education is essential to a successful, productive life, and that those without a degree will be left behind. Recent unemployment figures reflect that. Only 4.1% of those with a bachelor's degree or higher are, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployed at the moment.

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Andy Kroll is a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a soon-to-be graduate of the University of Michigan. His writing has appeared at the Nation.com, Alternet, CNN.com, CBSNews,com, and Truthout, among other places. He welcomes feedback, and can be reached at his website.

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