Post date: Feb 24, 2017 4:13:04 PM
Why Does College Cost So Much? Let's Claire-ify
Claire Benevento-12 I applied to ten colleges and it cost about eight hundred dollars. Seven of them had application fees, which ranged from sixty to eighty-five dollars. They all wanted to know my ACT score, and taking the ACT costs forty dollars each time; luckily, I only had to take it once beyond the free, mandatory ACT juniors take in April (thank you, whoever’s decision that was). Still, I had to send it to all ten schools, and that cost twelve dollars for each report. (Registration cost includes four free reports, but they stop being free once you know your score.) The FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is, indeed, free, and it’s what most schools use to determine the amount of need-based financial aid they want to give. But the ironic part is that a lot of the most expensive private schools also require students to fill out another form detailing their families’ financial situation: the CSS Profile. Like the FAFSA, it helps determine financial aid, but it costs twenty-five dollars to fill out the form and send it to one school, and sixteen dollars for each additional school. I’m actually not applying for financial aid because I like to spend money.
To be fair, there are fee waivers available for some students who need help covering these costs. People using the Common Application (a free service that allows students to apply to multiple colleges without separately telling each their name, class rank, and other standard information) can request fee waivers for all the schools they’re applying to if they meet one of several requirements, like being eligible for the Federal Free or Reduced Cost Lunch Program or living in a foster home. There is no fee waiver for sending ACT scores, but students meeting similar requirements can take the ACT for free twice. Students (usually those whose parents make less than $40,000 a year) may also be able to send the CSS Profile to up to eight schools with no cost. However, there are probably lots of people who would benefit from fee waivers who aren’t eligible to receive them.
The other problem is that after all the application and reporting fees are out of the way, you still have to pay for college. According to the College Board, an organization that helps students prepare for college and administers various standardized tests, the average cost of tuition at a four-year, in-state, public college is $9,410. That doesn’t include room and board, which can be as much or more. Out of state students at a public university pay, on average, $23,890, while the average cost a a private school is $32,410. Some are a lot more, like my “dream school,” Brown University, where total cost is $62,000 a year.
Fortunately, lots of people don’t have to pay that much. The FAFSA calculates an expected family contribution, and schools use that to determine the financial aid they offer. Many elite schools say they will meet one hundred percent of demonstrated financial need (but some don’t—thanks, NYU), and other schools give merit scholarships, up to the full cost of tuition, room and board, and maybe even extras like money for textbooks or study abroad. Getting those scholarships, though, can require traveling to a school for interviews and tests, and that isn’t free, either.
So, what happens to people who aren’t financially challenged enough to get fee waivers and tons of need-based financial aid, and who aren’t spiffy/lucky enough to get plenty of the cost covered by merit scholarships? They probably have to take out lots of loans and spend years paying them off. Yay.
A great option in Missouri for students who want a quality education without ridiculous prices is Truman State University here in Kirksville. The only problem is that new governor Eric Greitens (whose office has not yet responded to inquiries) cut more than eighty-two million dollars from the higher education budget for the spring semester, and wants to cut ten percent from it in his budget for next year. If Truman and other Missouri universities want to maintain their quality, they’ll have to raise tuition. If they don’t raise tuition, then they’ll probably have to cut some faculty, leading to larger class sizes and generally lower quality of education. Yay again.
There is a solution. (It is not making public college free. Forcing taxpayers to keep financing students’ education past high school would be great for a few dedicated students who would not get to go to college otherwise, but it would cause many students to be unmotivated because they aren’t paying for their own education. Also, if tons of money were being used to pay for students to go to college, there would potentially be less money going towards hiring a lot of quality faculty.) Part of the solution is for the state government to actually support public colleges. The other part is for private colleges not to set tuition at a price that’s higher than a fairly decent yearly salary. That way, more people would be able to pay the full price, and financial assistance could be better divided among those who need it—and that includes those people who don’t qualify for fee waivers but can’t comfortably afford to pay $16,000 a year for college even though the FAFSA says they can.
Even though elements of running a college are like running a business, the primary goal of a university should not be to make money, it should be to educate its students. Going to college is extremely popular, and universities (and other organizations associated with the application process) are taking advantage of the demand for college diplomas by charging ridiculous prices for them. If universities are actually invested in the idea of making a quality education available for all, then they need to find a way for applying to and attending college to be less of a financial struggle.