Читать книгу Paying For College For Dummies - Eric Tyson - Страница 17

Why does college cost so darn much?

Don’t plenty of schools pack a few hundred students into a lecture hall? That can’t be too expensive, right?

Well, not so fast! Look at the course offerings at most schools and you will be surprised at how many courses they do offer and the fact that most don’t have a large number of students enrolled. Also, only $0.21 out of every college tuition dollar is actually spent on teaching.

So where are colleges and universities spending their money? On administrators, the number of whom has grown twice as fast as the number of students, on facilities and athletics, and schools prioritizing research over teaching.

Colleges and universities have increased tuition prices at twice the rate of inflation while jacking up room, board, and student fees at four times the rate of overall inflation. Ouch!

Student debt is a major problem for many college students. The total amount of student loans outstanding in the U.S. has surpassed $1.5 trillion, making it the second largest form of debt outstanding by consumers, exceeded only by mortgage debt. And, more than one million student loan borrowers default annually on their loans and only 57 percent are current on their payments.

According to LendEDU’s analysis of student loan debt figures at nearly 1,000 four-year private and public higher education institutions across the United States, the average graduating borrower received their diploma and left campus with $28,565 in student loan debt. That’s a pretty hefty number.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the average starting annual salary for college graduates is about $50,000. These averages can be deceiving and not super relevant to individual situations. For example, some college grads complete their degree with more debt than the amount of their starting annual salary. Conversely, some have little to no debt and a salary a good deal higher than average.