The new College Board reports, Trends in College Pricing and Trends in Student Aid, indicate that increases in public college tuition have slowed, but problems for lower income students continue because the rapid growth in federal grant aid has stopped.
Established to help transform education in America, the College Board issues Trends reports that answer important questions about college affordability. In two reports published Tuesday, findings show the net cost of a college education continues to be a significant issue even as average published in-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities increased by 4.8% for 2012-13, a lower rate than in recent years.
“As tuition rises and grants and tax credits are there but don’t continue to rise, net tuition is rising so the burden on students is rising,” said Dr. Sandy Baum, co-author and a senior fellow at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education.
“The increased federal role of grants and tax credits that went up so much in recent years is not a sustainable trend,” she added. “The federal government cannot and will not continue to increase their financing of students at the same rate that it did in recent years.”
One point that Baum made during a teleconference on Tuesday was that the perception that students are borrowing more and more is incorrect. The increase in student debt is due more to the increase in the number of borrowers rather than the increase in debt levels.
She explained that, while some students borrow more than they can manage, those students constitute only a small minority of those borrowing money.
“What we’re really seeing this year is, as the economy stabilizes, higher education is stabilizing, too. But just as the economy is not stable yet, we’re certainly not there yet in higher education either,” Baum said. “Tuition continues to increase. It continues to increase faster than average prices in the economy.”
