The Higher Cost Of Learning
Brooks, Thomas R.
Costs of college education are rising as rapidly as educational expectations. Yet our search for ways to finance higher education in no way matches the growing determination that all who...
...Still, the notion of tying such benefits to some kind of service, military or otherwise, is not without merit...
...All a veteran had to do was secure admission to the college of his choice...
...He found that the average total cost among most fee-charging four-year colleges for on-campus students to be $2,400 a year...
...It also fits in with Paul Goodman's notion of "education as work" and as such deserving of pay...
...A little arithmetic, using Mr...
...Unfortunately, as Margolius reminds his readers, "some proposals for solving the problem of soaring college costs are only illusions as far as moderate income families are concerned...
...As Consumers Union might put it, a "better buy" can be found among the major state universities with costs ranging at $1,500-$1,600 a year for residents and $1,700 for nonresidents...
...To put college costs and the "national family dollar deficit" in perspec tive, it is useful to take a look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics' City-Workers' Family Budget...
...Something on the order of the GI Bill for all students would be a boon to hard-pressed parents...
...Just to provide the same relative amount of college student aid as was available in 1960, student aid in 1970 should top $1.9 billion—roughly four times the $447 million given to college students in 1960...
...Perhaps the financial experts might look into a special education tax on the order of the social security tax...
...This is the BLS's figure for 1959...
...Where is the money to come from...
...Short of this, however, one suspects that a fair amount might be shaved off the $47 billion we now spend on "major national security...
...Youngsters from low, or even moderate income families are just out, one gathers...
...All such proposals—the expansion of the Defense Act loan program or even the scheme for part-time employment embodied in the Johnson anti-poverty bill—lack the imaginative flair of the GI Bill some twenty-odd years ago...
...In 1950, the Veteran's Administration spent $2.6 billion on education under the GI Bill...
...The Ivy League, of course, is most expensive with costs averaging $3,400 a year...
...Standards of performance weren't necessarily lowered, but if a prospective student had a lousy high school record or lacked a course requirement the colleges were understanding...
...A family of four in New York City needs for "a modest but adequate level of living" an annual income of $5,408...
...Italics added...
...Present veterans-aid programs average $4.9 billion a year, mostly for pensions...
...Since tax abatements and deductions are now utilized to encourage industry expenditures of $10.5 billion a year on "research and development," some of which is certainly of dubious social value, possibly some way might be worked out to channel this money into education...
...As an instance of our failure, we have forgotten our experience with the GI Bill, a remarkable experiment in federally financed education for large numbers of people...
...A middle income family might get a tax deduction of $750$ 1,000 a year, certainly helpful, but a worker's family with, say, a youngster commuting to a state university, would get no deduction in most instances, or, in other instances, only about $50$ 100...
...The GI Bill at least had the virtue of rigging the education market in favor of the student...
...The funds available under the National Defense Act and college loan funds are limited in supply, though interest rates are lower...
...Colleges anxious to receive their due portion of the tuition money adapted their facilities and admission requirements to the students...
...In what surely must be a comment on our times, the budget planners make no provision for savings or expenditures in behalf of education...
...This figure may well be doubled over the next ten years...
...The family of four with a $5-6,000 annual income spent $53.31 a year while total expenditures for education came to $272.02 a year for families of four with an income between $10-15,000 a year...
...Educational expenditures on this order might become essential to keep the economy on an even keel...
...Moon's projected deficit...
...Of this, $30 million came from corporate and other private gifts, $215 million from the colleges and $20 million from state, federal and local governments...
...Margolius takes a dim view of borrowing...
...Moreover, middle-income parents often repay educational loans while youngsters from moderate-income families usually are saddled with repayment...
...A dean of one "prestigious" Eastern university recently reported that scholarship winners usually come from families with an income of $7,000 a year or better, rarely below that...
...A great number of people, who otherwise would not have gone on in school, were able to continue their education...
...Figuring on the basis of an average college cost of $2,500 a year and a student population of 4.5 million (the 1963 enrollment), Federal expenditures would be roughly $11.2 billion a year...
...We could easily leave to the youngster the timing of his "service," either after or before college or even spaced out over summer vacations...
...Present health and welfare expenditures are a shade less...
...If disarmament became a reality, there would be no problem...
...If the market is rigged, choice will not be free...
...The income tax deduction, says Margolius, would help middle-and higher-income families but not most wage earners...
...Now scholarships serve to bail out middle income families...
...Average costs run a shade higher at the big city universities, such as Boston University, at $2,750 a year...
...Time in the Peace Corps or national service (domestic peace corps) might make a sensible prerequisite for benefits under a revived GI Bill...
...There is no use kidding ourselves, an Educational Opportunities Bill would be expensive, at least as people now view public expenditures...
...For example, the old bugbear about aid to religious institutions just evaporated since the money went to the individual...
...Reading and recreation, personal care, tobacco and public school expenses are lumped together under goods and services and allocated $698 for the year...
...Rexford G. Moon, Jr., director of the College Scholarship Service of the College Entrance Examination Board, estimates that what he calls the "national family dollar deficit" in meeting college bills in 1970 will be over $3.3 billion...
...the reader may add about $300 more to bring it up to date...
...he points out that moderateincome borrowers just don't have access to credit at low rates as do higher-income families...
...There were none of the entanglements that go with today's proposals for federal aid...
...Yet our search for ways to finance higher education in no way matches the growing determination that all who desire a higher education shall have one...
...Not least among the attractions of such a GI Bill is the potential for freeing our colleges and universities from the research syndrome...
...As Kingman Brewster, Jr., the president of Yale, has remarked, "Unless and until we do something to countervail the personal financial advantage which goes to those who qualify for government research support, it is foolish to pretend that research and career choices are a genuine and uncorrupted response to voluntary intellectual enthusiasm...
...The accepted prognosis is that costs will continue to rise...
...Sydney Margolius surveyed 1964-65 costs at 700 colleges and universities for his advicetothe-consumer column in the labor press...
...The school drop-outs of that day found that they could return to school on terms meaningful to them...
...At a very simple level this can mean the difference between taking off for Peace Corps and/or civil rights work after graduation or going right to work at the most lucrative job one can find...
...He then received a grant for tuition, fees, and books and a monthly allotment to live on...
...My wife's cigarettes alone cost $147.16 a year, which is more than the average family of four actually spent on education in 1960-61—$102.38 according to the BLS...
...Costs rose beyond original expectations and the framers of the legislation made no allowances for increases in tuition and living costs...
...In any event, I would favor paying for equal education opportunities for all out of general taxation...
...Now, the GI Bill had its faults...
...Moon's ten-year span, indicates that the average family would be lucky to save a year's tuition for one child in that time...
...Costs of college education are rising as rapidly as educational expectations...
...The GI program was simple enough...
...Special examinations were devised to test capabilities so GI's were not penalized for the years away from school...
...One could, to adapt Robert Theobold's notion of a universal income, merely extend the GI Bill benefits to all youngsters born in the United States, or who have lived here a given number of years...
...I suspect that all markets in a complex society are rigged somehow...
...Scholarships obviously are not going to make up Mr...
...Yet, as a way of financing education with federal funds, the GI Bill has much to recommend it...
...It would be the largest welfare item in the budget as now structured, excepting social security payments which run close to $12 billion a year...
...Beyond the service requirements, there were no means tests...
Vol. 12 • July 1965 • No. 3
