Families of students enrolled in both public and private colleges and universities expect the cost of higher education to increase each year. Their reasoning is sound. The price of everything else — food, shelter, medical care, etc. — rises annually so it would be unreasonable to assume that the cost to attend college would remain static. What’s troublesome, though, is the pace and the consistency at which the price of a year at a college or university rises. For a long time now, annual cost increases for higher education have outstripped inflation.
There’s likely little relief in sight for students who will attend Tennessee’s public universities and community colleges next fall. State higher education officials recommended tuition increases of as much as 3 percent for community colleges and up to 6 percent for universities at budget hearings in Nashville on Tuesday.
Those are recommendations, to be sure, and not a certainty, but it does suggest that those who attend the state’s colleges and universities will pay more next year. The only uncertainty is how much more they will pay.
Whatever the increase, it is likely to outpace inflation, which is currently running at about 2 percent annually. Tuition hikes aren’t the only college-related expense to rise. Higher prices for room and board inevitably accompany tuition increases. Last year, for example, with inflation at less than 3 percent, college tuition across the country on average rose about 4.8 percent — the lowest increase in several years — but that was accompanied by a 3.7 increase in the average price of campus meal and lodging plans. That’s a pattern, unfortunately, that is likely to continue.
The rising price of higher education — a necessity these days for a job and career that will provide salary and benefits to support a middle-class lifestyle — is a growing burden for parents who understand the value of higher education and top-flight technical training and who strive to provide it for their offspring. The problem, of course, is that tuition hikes that outstrip inflation and wage and salary increases increasingly put the cost of higher education beyond the means of many students.