{"by":"anonjon","dead":true,"id":1295102,"parent":1294828,"text":"When Pell grants were named for the senator in 1980, a typical public four-year university cost $2,551 annually. Pell Grants provided $1,750, almost 70 percent of the total. Even private colleges cost only about $5,600 back then. Low-income students could matriculate with little fear of financial hardship, as Pell intended. Over the next three decades, Congress poured vast sums into the program, increasing annual funding from $2 billion to nearly $20 billion. Yet today, Pell Grants cover only 33 percent of the cost of attending a public university. Why? Because prices have increased nearly 500 percent since 1980. Average private college costs, meanwhile, rose to over $34,000 per year.

These numbers don't seem to be adjusted for inflation. If you adjust them for inflation the price increase for expensive colleges is only about 340%. (178% inflation, 5600 = 10k).

Colleges are also offering a lot of financial aid. If you look at NYU, for example, it offers about 26,000 in financial aid on average (vs a 38,000 tuition). So it would cost about 12,000 on average. Other colleges give much more financial aid (ex. hamilton college costs 41k, but offers something like 38k in financial aid). So from my random sampling, at least, it seems that college prices would be right in line with what they were in 1980.

(http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/CollegeDetail.j... Numbers are similar for other high-end schools.)

I am not a statistician/economist, but really, this doesn't seem to be the price of college per person really increasing, it seems more likely that the wealth is being distributed differently. The relatively wealthy are being asked to pay sticker price, while the less wealthy are getting a huge discount or free ride.

This makes sense, because it is people who write columns like this one that would really feel it in their wallets (the middle and upper middle class).

Whether this redistribution is a good thing is another question entirely, also it would be nice to know if our young adults are actually learning. I'm of the opinion that College is a garbage in garbage out sort of situation. There is no way to make sure that students will put in the effort, high achievement has to be a cultural thing.","time":1272296194,"type":"comment"}