““Today a federal Pell Grant covers only about one-third of what it costs for a public four-year college in state,” says Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access and Success in California. “In the 1980s it covered about half; in the 1970s it covered more than 70 percent.””— Why Is College So Expensive? : NPR (via robot-heart-politics)
Yeah but isn’t that what caused the problem? From what I’ve learned, a kid fresh out of high school could get a job relatively easily back then and have enough money to have a decent car, go to college, and possibly live on their own. Grants were given out like candy despite the fact that most of the kids getting them at the time didn’t need them, driving up costs.
Considering that only about 10% of college students qualify for Pell Grants, I would hardly argue that they give them out like candy or that this constitutes enough change in demand to be the most significant driver of rising college costs. In fact, the point of this statistic (if you’d clicked through and read the article) was to highlight the fact that because Pell Grants have been unable to keep up with the cost of college education, they can’t be what’s driving the increased cost.
Even in the 60s (when Pell Grants first became available), most college students couldn’t pay their full education and living costs with just the job they’d gotten straight out of high school. While a college education was far more affordable, it wasn’t that cheap.
I think there are things that we can look at that have contributed to the increasing cost of college education. For one, there has been a much greater push all around for people to attain higher levels of education. High school graduation rates have gone up significantly, as have college enrollment rates. While grants and other financial aid have helped many people to achieve this goal, there has been a significant cultural shift where college is actually prioritized by middle and even lower class families, which was not as much the case prior to the 1950s. The fact that blue collar jobs that pay well enough to enable a middle class existence have largely disappeared in the past 30 years, attaining a college education has become increasingly necessary if you actually want a decent job (or any job) as an adult. People are aware of this, and that has absolutely stimulated higher college attendance. Greater demand does, to some extent, drive up cost, especially when the people attending feel like it is worth almost any cost to get a degree and stave off proverbial financial ruin, which is the message Americans have been bombarded with for decades. (We’ve now gotten to the point, though, where huge college costs are actually breaking people financially instead.)
Another significant reason for rapid inflation in the cost of higher education is decreasing state support for public schools. Public schools are increasingly having to fund themselves through student tuition and fees. It’s why inflation for public education has long outpaced inflation for private education.
A third reason would be increased competition. With more people attending college, there is greater competition for exceptional students and talent. Universities spend more money on building their research reputation to draw in top candidates (which means faculty devote more time to research and less time to teaching, which means you have to hire more faculty), improve and build new facilities, and offer a huge variety of services that weren’t available to students in the 70s and 80s. All of these things have resulted in more faculty, more administration, more infrastructure. These things don’t happen without increased income, almost all of which has to happen on the backs of students (although there are some major donors who certainly help with these things at college—although even then, universities often spend a lot of money to prove they are worth those massive donations.)
There are a lot of reasons why college tuition has gone through the roof. Pell Grants, frankly, go to so few students and provide so little help that they really can’t be a major contributing factor.