By Dennis Hester
Budget cuts have created a tuition dilemma that perplexes all who try to address it. What needs to be done is to reframe the problem by moving it outside of the box.
This problem is of the worst kind, an intangible problem which simple math won’t give us the proper results. A budget cut of 15 percent doesn’t mean we lose 15 percent of the services/staff or that we raise tuition 15 percent. We have to look at long-term solutions that are investments in the growth of the university.
There are two issues with the tuition dilemma: student’s think tuition is too high and tuition is too low to pay for current expenditures.
The first issue with tuition is a perception problem, not a real problem. The reason students ignorantly complain tuition is too high is they are unaware of the actual return on investment (ROI) of a college degree.
The problem for students is not with the cost of tuition but with the perception of the value they are receiving for their expense. Four years of tuition at $40,000 is perceived as too high for what is perceived as an unknown amount of return on investment.
The problem is the value of a college degree is never really explained to students, so they are unable to understand why tuition increases are good.
According to monitor.Louisville.edu, research shows a person with a college degree, will earn $1million in their lifetime, over a person with only a high school education.
Figure that a high school person working a $10 hour job at Walgreens makes $20,000 per year, while a person with a college degree working at a call center for Humana makes $40,000 per year. That’s $20,000 more each year, from ages 21 to 65, which is 44 years. So 44 X $20,000 = $880,000 not including the interest, if it is invested.
The return could be just under $4million using the investment calculator available at www.swlearning.com.
Explaining this to students, the way to becoming a millionaire by completing their college degree, they would see the cost of $40,000 in student debt as a long-term investment into their future earnings potential and a small price to pay for a lifetime of wealth and privilege.
In addition, the benefits of working a white-collar job go beyond just the pay. As a white-collar worker, one enjoys two weeks of paid vacation, health care benefits, less stress and less physical demands on one’s body than a blue-collar job of retail or fast food.
Anyone who has ever had a fast food job can tell you it’s significantly more physically demanding than an office job. White-collar jobs also generally provide tuition reimbursement, in which the company will pay the student to continue their education to the master’s level and beyond, substantially increasing the student’s earning potential.
The university needs to hold mandatory seminars for freshmen to educate them about the actual low cost of tuition when compared to the return that they can expect over their lifetime.
This would show them the importance of completing their degree. Unfortunately, according to the university’s own statistics only 43.6 percent of the entering freshman class will actually complete their college degree.
For the 56.4 percent that don’t graduate and can only obtain blue-collar jobs earning $20,000 year, they will be hard pressed to pay off $40,000 in student debt.
In these mandatory seminars, the university needs to have role models of successful single mothers or other disadvantaged people who have completed their degrees and who are now living the American dream of wealth and privilege visit with the freshmen to explain what it feels like to be a college graduate.
Previous students who did not complete their degree and graduate should be invited to explain having tough lives, living paycheck to paycheck and what it’s like to have to choose between money for food or money for gas.
