The Rising Cost of Public Education in United States Essay

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The US government has reduced its state funding for the higher educational institutes to lower the college costs, especially for ethnic groups since the increase in educational costs have made it harder for color and lower-income student to enroll in these colleges. There are numerous benefits for enrolling in the best educational institutions after the students are graduated that mainly includes higher incomes. Still, it puts pressure on those students whose households are earning low. With such stagnant earnings, it is greatly difficult for racially and economically diverse students to have affordability and access to the highly-priced educational institutes. Recently, the costs for attending a public college have surged up to $21,370 as compared to $8,250 in 1980, which means it is an approximately 30 percent rise in the public education costs (Hess “The Cost of College Increased”).

The three causes for the rise in the cost of public education in the US are financial aids from the government and educational institutes, sticker price and price discrimination, and cost increment due to management issues. The consequences of this rise include fall in student enrollments and graduation rates along with late buying of new homes and planning for marriages by young adults sue to loan paybacks. The most effective method to solve this problem are to cut down or eliminate federal funding for education and hiring of part-time faculty.

Facts Regarding the Problem

In line with a 2019 report from the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the tuition has increased by 37 percent, and the net costs have even risen further by 24 percent (Hess “The Cost of College Increased”). The funding from the state was far below during the pre-recession time in the US. The 41 states naming Arizona, Hawaii, Georgia, Alabama, and Colorado, etc. spent less than 13 percent on students of the educational institutions (see attached figure). After the depression, the government had to fund the public institutions and the students for better educational provisions. For that, funding increased more than 60 percent, especially in the past decade.

Source: CBPP analysis using College Board Trends pricing report (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/cost-of-college-increased-by-more-than-25percent-in-the-last-10-years.html)

The tuition costs make up half of the revenues of the public institution of education, and the rest is taken care of by the government (Dickler “Why College Tuition Keeps Rising”). This distribution was different a few years ago, where tuition fees only entailed a quarter of the revenues of the public educationalists. Living costs have increased in recent years as well. Students prefer living near the campus or even on campus’ hostels. As a result, health care costs, meal costs, fitness centers, private clubs, and fancy laboratories of the public educational institutions have increased radically. This puts even more pressure on the educational institutions for increasing tuition costs. Sometimes, if the students have to take the health care plan offered by these institutions, then they have to pay a fairly large amount for that purpose.

When more students are enrolled in public educational institutions, other additional costs increase automatically escalate, such as construction within the campus or for a new building to accommodate newly entered students. Moreover, administrative costs, such as hiring part-time or full-time professors and their salaries, rise as well.

When the government keeps adding loans for the educational institutions without deep investigations of the students and their families for the ability to repay their loans afterwards, the loans and debt burden is increased on the governments and the educational institutions both if the family comes out to be defaulter ( Mitchell, Leachman and Saenz 2). Several administrators are added into the system and the bureaucratic system becomes even more complex. To minimize their negative impacts, educational institutes have to further increase their tuition fees. Another reason for increment in tuition costs is the cuts in state funding to the public educational institutes.

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According to the GI bill of rights, in 1944, the federal government tried to enroll more students into the educational institutes. For that, they continued to give aids to the families (Toppo “For-Profit Tuition Rises”). Due to the inflation in 1970, there was a price hike in tuition fees from the institutions.

Opposing Viewpoints

Despite an increase in costs of public educational institutions in the US for which the reasons mainly entail financial aids from the government and educational institutes, price discrimination, and cost increment due to management issues, there are numerous benefits for obtaining high education. The most noteworthy benefit is getting a high salary job if the student has received his graduate degree from an expensive high-grade university (Honu). He will then be more apt to return his student loan to the university from his earnings at the job.

Another opposing viewpoint is that it might not…

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…programs anymore or are either switching to less expensive community colleges. They lack the funds to fulfill the tuition expenditures and hence have to suffice themselves by opting for low paying jobs.

Another major consequence of the rising costs is the fall in graduation rates. When more students are dropping out of the colleges, the new enrollments are also reducing (Hemelt and Marcotte 19; Hemelt and Marcotte 448); hence, the rate of graduation also declines. The students find it hard to stay four years at the college; instead, they take small courses at two-year educational institutes and get the required course certificates for their future employments so that they start earning sooner. Most of them belong to low-income families. Therefore, they have to become an earning hand sooner.

Taking more loans and this putting an additional delay on the future of young adults in the procedure to buy a new home or planning their marriages is the third key consequence of rising educational costs. Forty percent of young adults delay buying their new homes because they got themselves into further loans and have to repay them by working (“Surprising Side Effects of Rising College Costs”). Fourteen percent do not get married because of debt, female graduates have their first kid at later ages because of debt payback, and medical or dental care is delayed by 27 percent of the same population due to the same reason.

Pragmatic Solutions

One of the solutions for the stated problem can be eliminated, or at least cutting down of federal educational funds and loans. This can be done by reducing government intervention for funding loans to public institutions to grant them to needy students. This process should be dealt with privately by the institutes themselves so that they could line out some easy methods for applying for loans for students belonging to low-income families. This would help them scrutinize for the defaulters closely and put a less financial burden on the public institutes.

Another solution is the hiring of part-time professors at the universities instead of hiring new ones, which require full salaries and that too in large amounts. It is called contingent faculty and helps in cutting down the costs of educational budgets of the institutes since the part-time faculty do not have a fixed tenure. The salary amounts that the public institutes have to pay to them are….....

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