While myriads of issues in higher education are only discussed among members of the education fraternity in the United States, the sharp upsurge in its cost is no longer treated as a sole topic for academia—politicians and parents alike fume over the ostensibly unstoppable surge of costs of post-high school education. In fact, it seems daily, new newspaper or magazine stories attempt to explain, bemoans trends, or propose a measure to mitigate such rising costs. Surprisingly, conducting a quick search of stories peddled on the net using such keywords as upsurging higher education costs produced over 24,000 hits (Hess, 2019). It shows that the surge in higher education costs is a concern, which warrants exploration of its possible causes, mitigation, and how to assist students’ large amounts of college tuition debts, as briefly discussed in this paper.
Scholars have provided possible reasons for the rise in higher education costs. According to Asker (2020), reasons for the surging cost of a college education include poor information on value and the golden ticket fallacy, use of and invisible menu in nearly all higher education institutions, presence of oligopolistic competition, and excessive regulation. Another study done by Hoffower (2019) showed that college fee is expensive for myriads of reasons, including but not limited to an upsurge in demand, a lack of state funding, an increase in financial aid, ballooning student services, and heightening need for more faculty members. The skyrocketing higher education costs are divided into costs incurred in accommodation, healthcare tuition fees, among others. Although increased cost cuts across different areas, tuition fees take the lead, and such alarming surge stems from increased inflation rates.
Since increasing tuition fees account for a more significant percentage of overall higher education cost increase, reducing it can be a more incredible achievement. Some of the of reducing increased costs of higher education addressed by politicians in the United States are giving grants to states to enable them to provide financial support for higher education institutions and students, lowering interest rates on students’ loans, and supporting private institutions financially (Kromydas, 2017). However, large tuition debt is a crisis among college students, and they can be assisted to solve their situation by increasing their access to federal student loans for community students, provided at affordable interest rates. Conclusively, the expensive cost of higher education has made it meaningless to acquire such education, and stakeholders need to rethink possible ways of lowering the increased cost.
References
Akers, B. (2020). A New Approach for Curbing College Tuition Inflation. Report. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Web.
Hess, A. J. (2019). The cost of college increased by more than 25% in the last ten years—here’s why. CNBC. Web.
Hoffower, H. (2019). College is more expensive than it has ever been, and the five reasons why suggest it is only going to get worse. Business Insider. Web.
Kromydas, T. (2017). Rethinking higher education and its relationship with social inequalities: past knowledge, present state, and future potential. Palgrave communications, 3(1), 1-12. Web.