Why Does College Cost So Much Today?

It’s no secret that affording college these days is almost out of reach for ordinary families. While wages have increased incrementally, college costs have skyrocketed, far outpacing inflation.

What’s worse (or almost as bad), is that in some schools the quality of the education has actually decreased: When I went to college in the 1980s people of my generation and older were more likely to be taught by a full professor. Today, our kids are far more likely to be taught by a lecturer. Lecturers do not need to have a terminal degree, and they have less expertise in the subject matter. But they are paid far less than their full-professor counterparts. So colleges today are actually spending less on educating our children than they were spending to educate us people of my generation. 

Lots of factors contribute to these rising costs, but a few stand out.

First, colleges are adding more “amenities"; while colleges are building more buildings, they're not just updating lecture halls or building newer dorms. There has been a big movement towards offering almost luxurious amenities. Doctor Benjamin Merkel, the president of new St Andrew's College in Moscow, Idaho, calls attention to this saying, “Another significant contributor to skyrocketing tuition is the amenities arms race and non-stop contest build, build, build and the expectation that our college campuses provide a resort-like amenities package….Colleges are now consumed with building hot tubs, climbing walls and lazy rivers and various spa facilities.” This is crazy to me–these things have nothing to do with education, but certainly affect your pocketbook when it comes time to pay tuition.

Second, there are other wasteful practices.  This one may not cost as much up front, but it's going to start to cost a lot more at these colleges because of the legal fees associated with them:  Bias Response Teams. These “teams” are tasked with reigning in anything perceived to be “biased” speech or behavior. It’s like an Orwell novel where someone is accused  of “Wrongthink”. If you kid has a “wrong” opinion it can be reported to these Bias Response Teams by a classmate or by a faculty member; it's really kind of tattling on each other, which is what the Hitler Youth were encouraged to do during in Nazi Germany and what the Red 

Guards were encouraged to do during the cultural revolution in China. They brought people into a kind of a “struggle session, ” which is a session where they would question:  Why do you believe this? Why did you say that?  

These Bias Response Teams are costing colleges money, partly in the cost of running these programs, but largely because colleges are spending a huge amount of money defending them in court. As Doctor Lilliana Garcia, an associate professor of leadership in public and policy at the University of Texas, San Antonio admits, “Lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Bias Response Teams at six different colleges and universities… (allege) that these actions violate the First Amendment on the grounds that they violate free speech or lead to censorship.”  Although she disagrees with this claim, she admits these court cases are an issue colleges must deal with, and they are spending a lot of money doing it .

Universities are having to “lawyer up” to defend themselves against these accusations in court, which you are also paying for with your tuition dollars. Often, instead of seeing them through, they are settling out of court and are also shutting down a lot of these Bias Response Teams. 

That’s the good news–parents and others who take action in the name of Free Speech are making headway. Getting involved in a Parents’ Rights Organization truly can help effect change: as a parent, you really CAN make a difference.

“Victimus Maximus” is the sequel to “Critical Feather Theory”, A Red Offenders Graphic Novel.