University of Virginia Library

The Costs Of College

(Reprinted from the Washington, Post)

The American colleges have now arrived
at the point that the American high schools
had reached by the middle 1920's. They are
still mainly the possession of the upper
middle classes, but only to a steadily
diminishing degree. They are, in fact, rapidly
being democratized. Four out of every 10
Americans of college age are now actually
enrolled in college, just about the proportion
that went to high school in 1925.

Local property taxes built the high schools,
but financing the colleges is not going to be
so simple. As a practical matter, the Federal
Government is the only instrument strong
enough to carry out the simultaneous expansion
of both capacity and quality that
is already rapidly accelerating. The only
real issue now is the form that the next
decade's Federal aid to higher education
must take.

In 1956, there were 2.8 million college
and university students. By 1966, there were
6 million. In 1956, the American colleges
and universities cost $4.2 billion a year.
By 1966, the cost had risen to $15 billion.
That is to say, enrollments had doubled
but costs had nearly quadrupled.

Currently a college education costs, on the
national average, about $800 more each year
per full-time student than the student pays
in tuition and fees. The deficit now is running
over $4 billion a year. Within five
years, it will be nearly $8 billion.

Most of this deficit is now being met by
the States through their university systems.
But, to maintain their present share of the
burden, the States would have to find more
new money for university budgets in the
next five years than they added in the last
ten. And there are urgent signs, of course,
that they will not.

The U.S. Office of Education is now taking
a close look into the future of college
financing. Joseph Froomkin, OE's assistant
commissioner for program planning, has
carried out a pioneer study of the unanswered
questions.

The distribution of Federal aid to students
is, first of all, a bit eccentric. Each graduate
degree in the natural sciences costs, on the
average, $7580 in Federal aid to students.
But each graduate degree in education costs
an average of $267 in Federal aid. In humanities,
the average is $449; in social sciences,
$1939; in engineering, $1657. Is advanced
training in the sciences really worth five
times as much to the country as in engineering,
and 29 times as much as in education?

The same kind of unintentional oddity
affects the Federal aid to college and
university construction. The institutions in
large metropolitan areas enroll 46 per cent
of the students, but got only 22 per cent
of the aid last year. The institutions out
in the country enroll 25 per cent of the
students, but got 54 per cent of the construction
aid.

Careful administration is the remedy to
this kind of inequity. But the main question
raised by Froomkin in much harder to
resolve. The number of college students from
low-income families will largely depend upon
public aid, and that will increasingly mean
Federal aid. If the Federal Government
encourages additional youngsters to go to
college, Froomkin asks, does not the Federal
Government have a responsibility to expand
the colleges?

Almost half of the enrollment in the American
colleges today comes from the top
one-fourth of the economic ladder, with
family incomes over $10,000. Fewer than 7
per cent come from the poorest one-fourth.