The High Cost Of Higher Education

President
Aoun rightly points to a causal connection between growing student debt loads
and underinvestment in public higher education. Massachusetts, for example,
falls more than 40% below the national average for state appropriations for
institutions of public higher education; whereas on average states invest 6.6%
of their budgets in public higher ed., MA devotes only 3.8% (http://www.sheeo.org/finance/shef/SHEF_FY10.pdf,
Table 10, p. 47).

Meanwhile,
Massachusetts finds itself in the dubious position of graduating students with
among the highest debt loads in the country. According to the Project on
Student Debt, graduates of MA colleges and universities leave their respective
institutions with more than $25,500 in debt, which makes the state the twelfth
highest in terms of debt load. Similarly, 63% of all students graduating from
universities in this state do so with debt, a figure that places us sixteenth
in the nation (http://projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-view2011.php?area=MA).

It’s
worth noting that this level of indebtedness is not the result of over-inflation
of prices at private colleges and universities. UMass Amherst, Boston, and
Lowell students all hover around the state average in debt, while UMass Dartmouth
exceeds the average by almost $10,000. The state universities and colleges are
not far behind, with Mass Maritime being the standout.

Indeed,
with the discounting (via financial aid) that is taking place at the big-name
private universities, we are rapidly approaching a situation where the overall
cost of attending a public institution will eventually become more expensive
than private colleges and universities. One need only look at the average debt
load of students graduating from Amherst ($12,843), Harvard ($10,102), and MIT ($15,228)
to understand this. (For the full report go to http://projectonstudentdebt.org/files/pub/classof2010.pdf)