Paying For College
Tuition keeps rising: Will new efforts by schools ease the burden?
Other institutions are hoping to provide families with a more realistic financial picture from the get-go. A group of more than 230 private colleges, the University of Chicago and Emory University among them, has started a prepaid tuition plan that will lock in today's prices a decade or two down the road--a great deal as long as your child can swing acceptance into one of these competitive schools. Individual colleges have also begun instituting fixed-rate tuition plans. For example, George Washington University recently announced that its price will stay at $34,000 a year for students in the class of 2008; the school has also pledged that financial aid packages will remain constant over four to five years.
Pace University in New York launched a similar program last fall. "It's not only the accessibility question but also the idea of a known quantity in a world filled with unknowns," explains James O'Hara, Pace's director of enrollment management. "You don't know where the economy is going to be or what's going to happen with job prospects, but we hope that if we say to people, `This is what school costs, and this is what it is going to cost the whole way through,' then they'll be able to think ahead and plan better."
While such reforms are well intentioned, critics contend that they will not have a huge impact on increasing access to higher education. "The institutions that need the most help are less prestigious state universities, which enroll the largest percentage of low- and middle-income and minority students," says Clara Lovett, president of the American Association for Higher Education, a nonprofit interest group in Washington, D.C. "They have fewer or no options. They don't have private endowments, they're getting less and less financial support from the public sector, particularly state legislatures--and it's only going to get worse." And even if such schools do take steps to ease the financial burden on families--as Illinois did this year, when it passed a guaranteed tuition plan for all of its public institutions--they may need to cut campus programs to make up the difference.
Not surprisingly, more students are basing their higher education decisions on the bottom line. Jessica McHugh, for one, opted to attend Pace in large part because of the fixed tuition. "It's a weight off my shoulders," says the freshman, who now knows that every year she will be able to cover her $10,270-a-semester tuition with a guaranteed financial aid package that includes a grant, several loans, and a work-study job in the admissions office. She adds: "I don't have to worry about how many thousands more dollars I may need to come up with or borrow and spend the rest of my life paying back. I can focus on my studies instead of my bills."
Up, Up, and Away
Colleges and universities have dramatically increased their prices in the past 20 years.
Average tuition and fees (in 2004 dollars)
Four-year private
1984 $5,093
2004 $19,710
Four-year public
1984 $1,148
2004 $4,694
Source: College Board
USN&WR
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