When Upper School College Counselor Jill Apple first started working in college admissions in the 1980s, college tuition was only $4,000 or 5,000 per year. Today, she sits down with sophomores, juniors, and seniors to help them sort through the $50,000 per year tuition cost found in some schools.
“I can vividly remember the tuition charges and think back on how they’ve increased so much,” she said.
Senior Madeline Graham is no longer shocked by the tuition price but still finds herself thinking about it a lot. “The college I’m attending doesn’t offer merit scholarships,” she said. “My college tuition is going to be a pretty major sacrifice that my parents will have to make. We have accepted that it is not going to be easy to afford.”
The cost of college tends to dominate conversation in the college admissions realm. “We’re always asking the question to admissions officers of why [their tuition cost] is so much higher,” Apple said. “They’re trying to justify decisions that are not made in their own office; those decisions come from the presidents of their universities.”
There is no one clear scapegoat for the cost of college: the combination of faculty benefits, fancy facilities and technology, student loans, and college comparison have all played a role in the high cost. “So much of the increasing costs come from faculty salaries and benefits. If we were to go back and take a look at the cost of medical benefits as an employee in this country, they would have doubled and tripled,” Apple said. “So much of the expenses come from human resources.”
Technology and the sciences contributes to this cost as schools feel pressured to replace and update technology and software in the classroom environment. When Apple worked in college admissions, the most costly technology was the telephone and new computer. Today, she feels colleges are expected to keep up with the constant advances made in technology.
“There’s something in our culture that says we want every college campus to look pristine and cutting edge,” she said. “Granted, a lot of colleges needed to update their science buildings and their dormitories, but does everybody need lots of fancy dining facilities? Today’s student culture has more choices; instead of one dining hall with one menu they have 20 different options.”
Upper School History teacher Nan Dreher, who teaches an economics course, separates the costs into two categories- public and private universities. “States have very significantly cut their funding to public universities, so those [public] universities have had to raise tuition to cover their costs,” she said. For the elite private schools, “students are desperate to get degrees from the most elite schools, which open a lot of doors. So, basically, those schools can pretty much charge whatever they want and there will be an abundance of students willing to pay. Economists would say that demand for these degrees exceeds supply, which forces up the price.”
Apple agrees, in part. Colleges try hard to justify these high prices. “There is safety in numbers,” she said. “So colleges have felt that if [another college] increasing theirs, they can as well, and use it as justification.”
But colleges have done their fair share of work to help subsidize costs, some intentionally using it as a tactic to appeal to more applicants. As colleges have raised their costs, they have also increased scholarships and financial to help enroll their classes.
“This isn’t a new phenomenon, but we call it discounting as opposed to scholarships,” Apple said. “Colleges do it in order to be more attractive to a student, but also to select who you can be more attractive to, giving you more control over the incoming class.”
Senior Julian D’Rozario experienced this phenomenon when he heard back from some of his schools over Spring Break. D’Rozario, who will be attending the University of San Francisco, found out he had won a merit scholarship without applying. “I didn’t actively try for [a scholarship],” he said. “When I received my letter from USF, in addition to a ‘welcome from USF’ there was another thing saying I had won some presidential merit scholarship!”
However, all these aspects of the college admissions money game seem miniscule in comparison to student loans. “What you’re hearing about most in the world of aid and paying for college is loans, and the whole loan business has gone crazy,” Apple said.
Dreher agrees with this statement. According to Dreher, loans are not of the same concern to colleges as they are to students. “Colleges don’t have to bear the consequences of students who can’t pay their debt – they get paid up front whether or not students graduate,” she said.
However, while the cost of college remains a forefront in discussion, a fix remains elusive. There are no quick and easy solutions to this nation-wide dilemma, but the federal government, private corporations, and colleges themselves are doing as much as they can to offset the cost of college.
