Regarding the article, “Faced with a perfect storm, small local colleges try to navigate the future” (April 13, TribLive): the “Skyrocketing Tuitions” chart and other publicly available data shows the extent of how much college tuition costs have increased relative to other economic indicators since 1980. The chart shows that, from 1980 through 2022, private and public four-year college tuition costs increased by factors of about 9.2 and 12.1, respectively. In the same time period, the minimum wage rate and the average hourly wage rate increased by factors of about 2.3 and 1.6, respectively.
The overall Consumer Price Index increased by a factor of about 3.6, the average cost of an automobile increased by a factor of about 4.6 and the average cost of a single family home increased by a factor of about 6.8. Thus, college tuition costs increased much faster than all these measures of earnings and consumer purchasing costs.
Perhaps another article should be published on the reasons why college tuition increased so much and what colleges are doing to control or even lower their costs. The skyrocketing costs of public colleges should be of special concern to taxpayers because these taxpayer-funded institutions were established to offer an affordable four-year college education to each state’s residents.
Vito Cedro III
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