I have to say, the best part of entering your 30s definitely has to be a mix of unabashed confidence in
your abilities and grueling student debt that will not leave your side for a very, very long time.
At this point it's my longest committed relationship.
And that’s also true for more than 44 million Americans
who currently owe $1.6 trillion in student debt—
and research shows that it’ll take each one of us
an average of 18 ½ years to pay off our loans.
It seems that even in a pandemic that’s changed everything about how we function in public life,
how we interact with fellow human beings and how we make a living hasn’t been enough for this country
to reconsider the tuition model.
Hi, I’m Sana. I’m still in debt. And this week, I’m going to talk about how tuition fees are kind of a scam
because of the system they’ve been built on.
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The fall 2020 semester is starting and one would think, as many students have been arguing,
that given how many universities across the country are conducting classes remotely, that tuition costs
would go down.
But that’s actually not the case — at all. There’s no consistency in how higher education is approaching
going to school in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis impacting everyone who’s not
rich or a corporation.
Harvard isn’t changing anything. Princeton is cutting its tuition by 10%, as are some other small colleges.
Some are freezing tuition for the year, and then you have the University of Michigan, which is
raising tuition by almost 2%...?
Students and parents are understandably annoyed: Tuition and tuition fees don’t only cover fixed costs
like professors’ salaries — they cover the costs of using campus facilities like computers, libraries, dining areas,
labs and gyms.
And sure, a lot of institutions have lost revenue due to
giving refunds to students unable to use the housing
and dining they had already paid for.
Some schools have already begun closing, with an
estimated 20% of all American colleges unlikely to
survive the pandemic.
And it's the way that the educational system has been built that puts us where we are today.
The current financial model for much of higher ed in the United States is based on this MO:
high tuition, high aid.
In theory, schools charge full price to the affluent
students who can afford it, while offering aid to
lower-income students to bring the net price down.
But that actually doesn't help, because the price of tuition is going up faster
than the amount of aid being given out.
And by up, I mean way up.
Say hello to this chart. It’s about to become your
best friend and blow your mind.
Over the past 40 years, tuition has gone up nearly
1,200%. Compare that to the average cost of everything
else having risen just 228%.
Americans as a whole spend annually about $30,000 per student —
more than any other country in the world,
except Luxembourg, where tuition is free.
So if we're spending so much money on education through grants and subsidies and loans,
why is college still so expensive?
Well, one major part of it is because of how much
universities pay faculty and staff — which comes out to
about $23,000 per student. And most of that is
apparently going to non-teaching staff.
It’s also in large part due to how there’s a three-tier
education system — private, for-profit and public —
with the public college system being the biggest.
But across the country, more and more states
have been providing less and less funding
to public colleges over the past 30 years,
helping result in higher overall tuition costs.
So increased cuts result in a scramble for funds, which result in increased tuition — all in an age where more
Americans than ever before are pursuing a college education.
So, when I call tuition in this country kind of a scam, I call it that because of how poorly the model of college
education has been built — it was never built to be accessible to everyone.
And since public colleges aren’t as much of a budgetary priority for so many states, it’s made
colleges cater to richer students.
And this pandemic has exacerbated the financial burden of college.
The lower-income students who are losing housing, campus facilities and networks — they’ve had to find
affordable, quick solutions to adapt to remote learning.
International students, who also tend to pay much higher tuition than local students and are aggressively
recruited by colleges, are also not really in a hot place.
Even though the Trump administration’s visa plans have been thwarted by lawsuits for now, there’s a lot
of uncertainty about their future.
So, why not just get reduced tuition or just get rid of it entirely?
Well we do live in the United States.
It’s not just because the system of education isn’t built to be free and accessible to all,
but because it’s gonna take a lot more convincing politically,
even though the majority of Democrats believe in tuition-free college.
Arguments, from both liberals and conservatives,
who find themselves usually on the same team with
different uniforms, revolve around diminishing the
institution of higher education into
a business transaction,
rather than something that can help everyone,
help society.
They don't, in practice, see education as a fundamental right.
Here, tuition’s function has gone beyond payment for education or for a service — it’s become a
financial prison, keeping tens of millions of Americans in debt.
The idea of student loans has always been a weird one to me, especially if you’re claiming to be a
capitalist economy.
Ensuring a large percentage of your population is in debt also ensures that their spending
ability is limited, their economic output is constrained. And that hurts the overall growth of economic capital.
So the TL;DR of this video? Don't go for that second master's, even though it's very tempting.
Raise your hand if you're considering a second master's
but can't afford it without going deeper into debt?
Yeah. So everyone's been talking about tuition these
days. What are your thoughts? Do you think school
should be a lot more accessible than it is right now?
Let us know in the comments, and don't forget to
like, share and subscribe, and we'll see you soon.