For Some, Cost of College Moves Out of Reach

Feb. 10, 2007 — -- Taylor Reed, 22, has a college education, a bright future and $100,000 in student loan debt, something that will burden him for years.

"I'm not going to be able to use the full amount of my income to establish myself," he says. "To buy a house will be a little tougher."

Reed works at a restaurant in New Jersey while he decides how best to use his degree from McDaniel College, a private liberal arts school in Westminster, Md. To get that degree, Reed and his parents took out loans -- the only way, he says, that he could finance his education.

Reed's debt is higher than the national average, which is about $20,000 per graduate.

"The tuition was close to $30,000," he says, "and it kept going up about $2,000 per year."

Those tuition increases are a key point in growing questions about student debt and pricing practices at the nation's private and public colleges and universities.

Over the past 20 years, inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, increased by 84 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the cost of tuition, fees and room and board at both public and private colleges and universities grew at a rate much faster than inflation.

According to The College Board, those costs tripled. In the 1985-1986 academic year, comprehensive costs at public schools totaled $3,791. For this academic year they are $12,796. At private colleges and universities 20 years ago, comprehensive costs totaled $8,902. This academic year, the number is a stunning $30,367.

The new chairman of the House of Representatives' Health and Education Committee, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., says, "Middle class families and certainly low-income families find themselves in a crisis with respect to the accessibility of higher education and the affordability of higher education."

Princeton University, the elite Ivy League school in Princeton, N.J., for one, took the unusual step -- albeit a small one -- of not raising tuition for the next academic year, 2007-2008. Princeton dipped into is nearly $14 billion endowment and made other budgetary adjustments to hold tuition steady at $33,000. The last time it did not raise tuition was 40 years ago.