Rising Education Costs & the American Dream

The cost of college keeps rising but who is really feeling the pinch, and what is the larger impact on the future of America? CNN.com reports on research from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education which discusses what the rising costs of higher education really means for current and future generations of Americans and how that will affect our standing in the world.

"College tuition continues to outpace family income and the price of other necessities, such as medical care, food and housing," the center said. College tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, towering over increases in medical care, housing and food, according to the report. Median family income rose 147 percent during the same period, the report said.

In Austin, Texas, Tony D'Addeo, a high school senior and straight-A student, hoped to attend an Ivy League school, paid for with his parents' stock options.

But the options, once worth several hundred thousand dollars, are now worthless.

"I think a lot of families -- lower class and middle class -- are having to readjust their plans and goals," said D'Addeo, who is now looking at a state school or possibly signing up for an ROTC program to cover college expenses.

The report gave a failing grade in affordability to all states but one, California, which received a "C."

"The nation's colleges and universities have become less affordable for students and their families since the early 1990s," it said. "This year continues the trend in deteriorating college affordability in the majority of states." See how tuition has risen in comparison to other prices »

In most states, the percentage of an average family's income used for a public four-year college -- after financial aid -- has increased, the report said. "On average, students from working and poor families must pay 40 percent of family income to enroll in public four-year colleges. Students from middle-income families and upper-income families must pay 25 percent and 13 percent of family income, respectively."

From a personal standpoint, while the cost of living, cost of goods, etc. are always going up, not down, it does bother me that the direct result of the cost of higher education increasing will be that countless high-achieving students from our inner cities, single-parent homes, and economically depressed regions (as I formerly was) will now find it even more difficult to realize their dreams of gaining a higher education and making a new life for themselves in order to attain "the American Dream." In my understanding, the American Dream has to do with the ability to pull one's self up by the proverbial bootstraps through hard work, achieve success in one's desired vocation, and gain the economic means to provide for one's family. The key here, without a doubt, is higher education (e.g., college, graduate school, and so on) which opens many doors and provides it's recipients with access to career paths as well as being the key to social and economic networks which one must access in order to become upwardly mobile.

As a high-achieving, "straight-A" student who financed my own college career and graduate school entirely through academic scholarships, the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program, need-based grants, government funding such as the Pell Grant, and graduate fellowships, I know there is no way I could have possibly become the first member of my biological family to gain a college education without financial assistance combined with a cost of education in Florida that was one of the lowest in the country at during my educational endeavors from 1996-2005 (AA/Computer Engineering, BS/Management Information Systems, MBA/Entrepreneurship, MIS, Management). My general calculations were that I received over $75,000 worth of funding which helped me reach my goals. Thankfully, by God's grace and the support of my mother who was a retired teacher, I had been a straight-A student from kindergarten all the way through 10th grade when I tested out of high-school with an early G.E.D. Doubtless, the academic achievement in addition to my community service and extracurricular activities helped me compete against other high-achieving students for limited funding.

The fact remains however, that if the United States Government is serious about providing a quality, affordable education to youth who want to make something better out of themselves, then they will allocate money in the federal budget for this purpose as well as introducing legislation to make college more affordable. If Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world can guarantee a college education to anyone who completes high school then what's wrong with our picture? After all every gubernatorial and Presidential candidate talks about how they're going to improve the quality and affordability of education in this country when they are elected. But that's it, it's mostly talk and no follow-up action. To this point, the US Government has NOT been serious about making college affordable for the have-nots, and as a result fewer youth who have the intellectual capacity to attend college will do so only because they lack the financial capability. All of those things will continue to impact our ability to compete with other countries for human and intellectual capital, advances in science and technology, economic prosperity, and more.