tootboy
Try not to look too far ahead, but keep your eyes on the future.
College Tuition and the Presidential Elections
Full Story: By Neal McCluskey
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mccluskey200404190820.asp
To illustrate the alleged horror of the college-funding situation, the Kerry campaign's website features figures from the nonprofit College Board's "Trends in College Pricing 2003," which notes that the average tuition at four-year public colleges has risen from $3,487 in 2000-2001 to $4,694 in 2003-2004, a 28-percent increase. It's a jump Kerry attributes to the Bush administration's failure to bail out states suffering through budget crises — crises that forced states to cut public college funding.
Unfortunately, the Kerry team appears to have missed a lot of important information in the College Board's report. For instance, the report notes that in 2002-2003 about half of all undergraduate students at public four-year colleges received grant aid — money they don't have to pay back — averaging over $2,400. It also points out that the average student at a two-year public college received grant aid that covered his entire tuition, and that, after factoring in grants, the average net tuition and fees for a student at a four-year public institution were only $1,700. Suddenly, students' futures look a lot brighter.
In his defense, Kerry is not alone in overestimating students' woe. Last November, in unveiling theCollege Affordability and Accountability Act, their entry into this year's Higher Education Act reauthorization, Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce mentioned two powerful figures. The first is that the average graduate is leaving college roughly $17,000 in debt. A discouraging statistic, but for the second figure: Over his lifetime, that same graduate will make roughly $1 million more than he would have had he not gone to college — a $983,000 net gain.
Despite this obvious windfall, committee Democrats, as well as student activists and politicians across the country, continue to characterize the tuition increases that have raised average debt to $17,000 as "taxes on students." If so, they're the toughest taxes students will ever love.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/mccluskey200404190820.asp
To illustrate the alleged horror of the college-funding situation, the Kerry campaign's website features figures from the nonprofit College Board's "Trends in College Pricing 2003," which notes that the average tuition at four-year public colleges has risen from $3,487 in 2000-2001 to $4,694 in 2003-2004, a 28-percent increase. It's a jump Kerry attributes to the Bush administration's failure to bail out states suffering through budget crises — crises that forced states to cut public college funding.
Unfortunately, the Kerry team appears to have missed a lot of important information in the College Board's report. For instance, the report notes that in 2002-2003 about half of all undergraduate students at public four-year colleges received grant aid — money they don't have to pay back — averaging over $2,400. It also points out that the average student at a two-year public college received grant aid that covered his entire tuition, and that, after factoring in grants, the average net tuition and fees for a student at a four-year public institution were only $1,700. Suddenly, students' futures look a lot brighter.
In his defense, Kerry is not alone in overestimating students' woe. Last November, in unveiling theCollege Affordability and Accountability Act, their entry into this year's Higher Education Act reauthorization, Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce mentioned two powerful figures. The first is that the average graduate is leaving college roughly $17,000 in debt. A discouraging statistic, but for the second figure: Over his lifetime, that same graduate will make roughly $1 million more than he would have had he not gone to college — a $983,000 net gain.
Despite this obvious windfall, committee Democrats, as well as student activists and politicians across the country, continue to characterize the tuition increases that have raised average debt to $17,000 as "taxes on students." If so, they're the toughest taxes students will ever love.
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