Alex S. Michigan

College Tuition

Why college tuition prices are so high and how they can be reduced.


          College tuition is way too high and not affordable for a lot of people. College tuition is one of the most expensive things you will have to pay in your life.With college tuition prices averaging at $20,000 to $35,000. College tuition prices need to be brought down. It really hurts the person and/or the person's family paying for it, and considering that 44.2 million americans are in debt from student loans, that maybe should tell you that college is to costly for the average american family to afford and is just way too expensive. Below are my following reasons why colleges prices are way too high

          The first reason why college tuition is so expensive is the amount of profit most colleges make. For example: Michigan state last year had a net position of $3.2 Billion. This is an insane amount of money as it is. Now let's take a look at The University of Michigan's Revenue, Just for operating activities. All of the operating together equal a staggering $8 Billion in revenue. Let's take a look at some other states Colleges, Ohio State has a $6 Billion revenue, UCLA has a revenue of over $6.4 Billion. The University of New York almost $9 Billion. Considering colleges only spend 22.7% (on average) to pay for things like student expenses and construction means that they have a staggering 78% profit margin, which is a huge profit margin. So my point is they have the ability to lower and still make billions, but they choose not to.

          The second reason college tuitions are so high and getting more expensive by the year is inflation rates. The national rate of inflation is 1.5%, college prices for tuition went up 3.7% in the year 2014-2015, but historically it goes up around 5% every year, this means they are raising their prices over 3% more than the national rate of inflation! Now although this is the one thing that it's not completely the colleges fault they are still taking complete advantage of the inflation rate by increasing their tuition costs over twice as much as the national inflation rate. At the current rate of college inflation, college in the year 2022-2023 will be around $70,000, a four-year education would cost over an estimated $305,000. This is another key reason for college being so expensive. If they would lower their inflation to a 2% that is .5% higher than the national rate. This would help college in the long run be more affordable for more people because each year their price would drop in ratio to the national inflation, therefor making it cheaper for americans.

          The third reason college tuition prices are so high is unnecessary spending. This applies to colleges spending huge amounts of money on stuff like getting new floral arrangements every week and overpriced teacher salaries. Another things that adds to this is stuff like the owners and high officials of the college spending money on stuff like $5,000 a year on limo services and $800 a night on hotel rooms and other things of that nature. These two statements (The $5,000 on Limo services and $800 on hotel rooms) are true, the president of Phoenix University spends this like it's no big deal. Then there is the overpriced teacher salaries, One teacher got paid $432,000 a year, which is insanely high for a teachers salary, not saying that teachers don't work hard but $432,000 is actually $32,000 more than the president's annual salary. So these unnecessary purchases and overpriced teacher salary has a lot to do with why college tuition prices are so high, these prices could be lowered if people like the college presidents did not spend absurd amounts of money and very stupid things, and to reduce “unnecessary” spendings.

          As you can see future president, these are the three main reasons why college is so much money. If the colleges actually made an effort to fix these things, like reduce their own inflation rate, not overpay the teachers just because they ask for raises, and not have such a huge profit margin, it would save americans thousands of dollars on college tuition and would reduce student debt throughout the country for generations to come. If these were reduced I'm positive that college would be more affordable for all americans.