Just a Bump in the Beltway

The fabulous $50,000-a-year education
College fees skyrocket as campuses pursue talented students and attractive facilities, making education less accessible to the poor.
By Peter Hong, Peter Hong is a Times staff writer.
February 18, 2007

LAST WEEK, George Washington University became the first school in the country to charge undergraduates more than $50,000 a year.

The university, which is in Washington, will charge about $39,000 in tuition plus another $11,000 in mandatory fees (including housing), making it the most expensive in the country — but not by much and not for long. About a year ago, several other private schools pushed their costs above the U.S. median household income, now $46,326. With fee increases consistently exceeding inflation, many more schools can be expected to join the $50,000 club long before this year's freshman class graduates.

Overall, tuition and fees at four-year institutions increased 35% over five years (and that's after being adjusted for inflation), according to the College Board.
....
Margaret Soltan, an English professor at George Washington, enjoys her comfortable office and floor-to-ceiling windows on an increasingly luxurious campus. But she also points out that the university relies increasingly on part-time instructors rather than investing in costly full-time faculty positions.

Soltan sees the posh atmosphere on her campus and others like it as a byproduct of the broadening gap between the wealthy and the rest of the nation. "You've now got this class of hyper-rich people in this country whose kids are attracted to chic urban schools like NYU and GWU, which are full of well-dressed sophisticates just like them," she said.

As colleges become more like luxury items, students and their families are paying for them the way they would a pricey house or car. Student loans taken through private lenders now make up 20% of educational borrowing, according to the College Board. Ten years ago, the figure was 4%. Private loans are not guaranteed by the government as are federal student loans, and they frequently carry higher interest rates, especially for borrowers with poor credit ratings.

It seems colleges and universities will continue to hike tuition and fees as long as society is willing to pay, and ordinary students will have a harder time paying their way. A 2004 Century Foundation report showed that only 3% of students at the nation's 146 most selective schools come from the nation's lowest socioeconomic quarter; 74% come from the richest quarter.

All that dough ain't going to faculty. The fastest growing segment of teachers are adjuncts, who typically get paid by the hour and receive no benefits and have no job security. Nationally, more than 40% of college teachers are adjuncts. Read this whole article as an extension of the cheap labor philosophy of conservatism at work.

Keep the working classes out of the colleges and condemn them to low wage work for life.