College Costs

Introduction

It's no secret that financing a college education is getting tougher. College costs have skyrocketed over the past decade or so, and there's no relief in sight. Average tuition at four-year colleges will increase 7 percent this school year, double the rate of inflation. Student aid is not increasing fast enough to plug the growing gap between tuition and family finances. In addition, there is a growing number of older students entering college today. These students have families that they need to support. I know, because I am a family man who has returned to school. I wish to finish my degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The only problems I face are financial in nature. It is with this in mind …show more content…

The Financial Aid Page explains that:

Congress's budget-cutting Republicans want to spend $450 million less in 1996 on student grants, a move that education officials say would take nearly 200,000 student off the grant rolls. Also at risk: a new federal program that helps less affluent students by permitting them to repay federal loans over a longer period if their incomes' after graduation are modest (Kantrowitz).

Not surprisingly, the American Council on Education an organization of colleges and universities, recently reported that fewer colleges than in the early 1990's report enrollment increases among black and Hispanic students, who are generally less able to pay for college.Once in school, more and more students must work to pay their tuition bills. At least 40 percent of full-time undergraduate students are earning while they learn, says the ACE.

The prognosis isn't encouraging. "The tuition spiral is not likely to end, nor is student aid likely to catch up anytime soon," write college cost experts Lawrence Gladieux and Arthur Hauptman in a new report, "The
College Aid Quandary." To a nation that likes to think of itself as a meritocracy, not merely a bastion of privilege, that's a disturbing message
(Kantrowitz).

Well, that's a lot of important statistical information. Enough
I think that most people would like to throw this paper out and forget the whole idea of returning to school.