The development of American higher education has meant a changing role and responsibility in society, but it’s squeezed the middle class in ways that the poorest and wealthiest students haven’t experienced.
Tuition cost increases outpacing income growth and inflation is not a new trend, but a decades-old pattern, Jonathan R. Cole notes in Salon.
Costs per student at different colleges and universities can vary, even when the campuses are similar. The many responsibilities, goals, and actions within one university can be a headache that makes costs difficult to control, let alone limit.
With those pressing concerns, then, colleges have a difficult task of preserving higher education as a path for upward social mobility. The university systems of New York and California, which tend to educate large numbers of immigrants and low-income students, have a bigger challenge to preserve that aspect of higher education than others.
To do that, financial aid has been focused on expanding Pell Grants and other forms of aid that target low-income students. President Obama’s 2017 budget, for instance, proposed an increase in Pell Grant amounts while indexing the grant amounts with inflation, and rewarding colleges for graduating “a significant number” of low-income students. That’s in addition to $61 billion over a decade for two years of free community college.
Income-based repayment plans disproportionately benefit low-income students as well. More of them need to borrow for school, and they’re most at risk of defaulting on their loans, even though their loan amounts are relatively small.
Free community college might drive down those risks, but tuition is already low at community colleges. Living expenses, transportation, books, and other costs require student loans, and pushing more students to community colleges, which have low graduation rates, could make students worse off, in debt and without a degree.
High-income students don’t worry. “Price is not a determining factor in their decisions to have their children apply to the top schools or attend if admitted,” Cole wrote. Colleges charge wealthy students higher prices for the benefits of middle- and low-income students. Regardless of the higher education system, wealthy students have a path to education.
The middle class, then, has strong anxieties over changes in higher education.
“The affordability crunch falls on neither the 1 percent nor the .1 percent, nor on those at the bottom of the income hierarchy, but on those in the middle class whose annual family income ranges from, say, $50,000 to $150,000 and who may have more than one child attending college simultaneously,” Cole wrote.
Higher education is another symptom of the American middle class losing ground, as the Pew Research Center put it. That’s a relative slip; Americans overall have become wealthier, exiting the lower and middle classes for the upper class. For political sway, however, the emphasis has moved away from the middle class.
More programs for financing higher education, and programs that make costs less of a concern to low-income students, can paradoxically push up education costs. More students gain access to college, enrollments climb, and colleges can increase tuition and fees without losing students. Part of that is driven by student demand for various services, along with federal requirements, but the bulk of funding responsibilities fall on middle-class students and their parents.
To be sure, college graduation rates are at an all-time high. Many students benefit from attending. However, students who don’t complete their degree carry burdensome amounts of debt. For them, the mantra of “college for all” hasn’t brought forth a sunny reality, and the middle class has to foot that bill.
