Why is college tuition rising so quickly?
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Editor,
Congratulations to those gutsy Occupy Polson protesters, who have sparked a lively conversation about cuts to Pell grants and the rising cost of college education.
When our son went to MSU a decade ago, we paid around $1,500 per semester for tuition and mandatory fees. The same education now would cost twice that much: $3,220 for tuition and fees — that’s $6,440 a year or $25,760 for a four-year degree, assuming a student finishes in four years (most don’t) and that college tuition stays the same (it won’t).
And Montana is still a slight bargain. Tuition, fees and room and board cost $17,000 a year, on average, at state colleges throughout the U.S., compared to $15,430 here.
No wonder students and parents are panicked. My paycheck hasn’t doubled in the past 10 years. Has yours?
We were able to help our kids with tuition. But many parents — especially in the current economy — aren’t. Pell grants, ranging from $555 to $5,550, helped 9 million low-income students across the nation attend school last year.
Is this a good investment? Absolutely.
Is allowing college costs to skyrocket while family incomes plummet a viable way to enhance our competitive edge or invest in the future? Absolutely not.
I paid around $26 per credit in 1979 to attend the University of Montana. I could cheerfully afford to take Sen. Carmine Mowbray’s advice (Legislative Notes, Jan. 11) and work a part-time job at minimum wage to pay for my education. But as protestor Peregrine Frissell noted in last week’s letter to the editor, “times are changing.”
Our state university system was established to make higher education affordable to all who aspired to it and to provide Montana with a well-educated citizenry. Instead, we’re settling for higher education affordable to a few, and graduates saddled with sizeable debt.
I’d suggest the Occupy Polson protesters, and anyone else concerned with the burgeoning cost of education, take their concerns to UM, MSU, the State Board of Regents and our legislators, and ask why college costs have doubled in a decade, and why students and their parents have taken the brunt of that increase.
Are students getting a better education than our son did in 2001, or just digging a deeper hole for their future and ours?
Kristi Niemeyer
Polson
