It’s that time of year again, when millions of people throughout the country and all over the world either begin or return to college. And like anything these days, the cost of doing so is going up.
An op-ed piece published in The New York Times (NYT) this week titled “The Hidden Costs of Higher Ed” cites data showing tuition and associated fees going up 439 percent during the last quarter-century. Certainly it’s normal for the cost of anything to increase during such a long span of time, but the NYT article outlines some insidious ways this increase happens. Many colleges use services such as Tuition Management Systems, which bills itself as providing programs to help families afford education. These services allow college students to pay for their educations on a payment plan. This makes sense for some, but does add a fee of about 3 percent for students paying their tuition with a credit card, which is a hefty add-on to often sizable tuition fees.
There are, of course, other reasons the cost of a college education is rising. A 2010 piece in Forbes asked “Why Does College Cost So Much?” The article points out how out of step the steady increase in tuition fees is with overall increases in the cost of living:
“Since 1981 the list price level of tuition and fees has risen sixfold while the consumer price index has only increased two-and-a-half times.”
So why is this? The article points out that in higher education “technological progress has not reduced the number of labor hours needed to ‘produce’ the service” – in short, you still need teachers to teach, and their skill is highly specific to the individuals doing it. This is in keeping with our recent coverage on “Why Some Educators Still Struggle With E-Learning,” as is the article’s second conclusion:
“Technological change affects higher education directly. But unlike steel or autos, where the primary impact of new techniques is to reduce the amount of labor or energy it takes to make the product, new technology in higher education tends to change what we do and how we do it.”
And in doing so, it makes it more expensive. No matter how many efficiencies are introduced by e-learning, it’s always going to cost more than a blackboard and chalk.
Not surprisingly, colleges pass these cost increases on to the consumer – the student. Just look at a Google news search for the term tuition increase and you’ll see these fees being hiked up at schools around the globe.
So what are you, as learning and development professionals, hearing from your employees active in your tuition assistance programs? Are they complaining of increases this year? Are you noticing increases in tuition costs in instances where your organization directly administers tuition payment?
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