College costs on the rise

Throughout the presidential campaign, Barack and Michelle Obama talked a lot about the educational opportunities they were afforded as young adults. Through education and family support, they claimed to have climbed up the metaphorical ladder from working class backgrounds to Washington’s inner circle.

But it’s unclear whether the country Barack Obama will take over on Jan. 20 is living up to its responsibility to provide current students and future generations with the same opportunities partially responsible for Obama’s own success.

College costs are eating up more and more of family incomes. That doesn’t come as a surprise to many students.

And it’s why Indiana, along with 48 other states, has been flunked in affordability. The cost of higher education has increased 439 percent nationwide from 1982 to 2007, even while median family income rose only a more modest 147 percent during the same period, according to the recent report, “Measuring Up 2008,” released by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

The cost of higher education has been on the rise for everyone, but it disproportionately affects our state’s poorest residents.

Indiana families in the lowest 20 percent income bracket now must allocate 59 percent of their income to pay for a single year at a public university. And that’s after financial aid deductions are made. Families in the bottom 40 percent of the income bracket should plan on spending 43 percent of their income on education.

But if you’re making less than $12,000 annually, the median for families in the lowest bracket, spending any money – much less 59 percent of your money – on anything aside from food and shelter isn’t likely to even be an option.

On the other hand, the same education costs but a few thousand dollars more, after financial aid is taken into consideration, for families within the highest 20 percent income bracket, meaning they have to allocate only 9 percent of their total incomes to it.

Patrick M. Callan, the center’s president, said in a New York Times article published Wednesday while middle class families with a history of higher educational attainment will finance educations for their children through growing debt, rising costs are beginning to virtually exclude low-income, working-class families from ever attending college.

Thus, the rising cost of college and its disproportionately negative consequences for lower-income families has made education an entitlement for the elite and a hollow dream for many.

Equalizing access to higher education might be expensive. It might involve substantially increasing state taxes. In a time of recession, that will of course be painful. But compromising the quality of our state’s education, the key to future success for our society and individuals, cannot be an option.