index

Last night the President touched on the cost of higher education in his “State of the Union Address,” and its impact on middle class families.  

“We’re shaking up our system of higher education to give parents more information, and colleges more incentives to offer better value, so that no middle-class kid is priced out of a college education. We’re offering millions the opportunity to cap their monthly student loan payments to ten percent of their income, and I want to work with Congress to see how we can help even more Americans who feel trapped by student loan debt.”

This is where the president misses the point, and where Republicans have failed to comprehend the missing point of the rising cost of higher education.

Currently, the average student graduates from colleges and universities with around $26-30,000 in student loan debt.  Last year student loan debt reached a milestone of over $1 trillion dollars in federal student loan debt.

The Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit advocacy group, reported that seven in ten college seniors graduated in 2012 with student debt, which on average was $29,400. In some states the average debt was as high as $33,650, and in others as low as $18,000. Likewise, colleges had average student debt levels ranging from $4,450 to $49,450.

Washington is fixated on only one aspect of student loan debt, but nothing in the president’s address last night or from Congress addresses the other aspect; why does it cost so much to attend a college or university?

Has anyone looked at the rising rate of administrative staff?  Robert A. Howell visiting professor of business administration, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and senior partner at Howell Group LLC, commented in a Wall Street Journal article regarding this.

“There has been an explosion in the number of support staff in many institutions: Deans, officers for a variety of social initiatives, personnel to support all the extra facilities and services provided to the students, marketing and admissions staff, administrative support, and career-placement staff. This adds considerably to the overhead.”

There are other aspects that drive the tuition of college and university costs, but to only focus on student loans will not solve the problem.

The final aspect of this systematic student loan debt crisis is when they graduate and cannot pay off the debt.  Right now college graduates have high degree of unemployment and delaying their futures.

Its time for Washington to look at all aspects of this problem and not just focus at one aspect of this equation; Americans deserve better.       

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]