It is the facilitator of the American Dream. People can grow up poor, in an urban or rural setting, but can hope to pull themselves up out of poverty with education. Unlike many other areas of the world, America mostly is a meritocracy facilitated by education. As a society we have recognized this and require elementary and high school education to be provided “free” (paid by tax dollars) to all young people and most states require attendance to age eighteen. Still, 15% of the U.S. population does not have a high school diploma. College, on the other hand, is voluntary and requires payment by the individual. Unfortunately, only 17% of the U.S. population has earned an undergraduate …show more content…
However the average income for americans has not risen at anywhere near the rate of the average college tuition. The inflation rates of college since 1985, college education inflation rate has risen nearly 500%, while the overall consumer price index has risen 115%.
Even though bachelor's degree holders enter the workforce at a later age and forgo “opportunity costs,” -- or money they could have made during those years instead of being in school -- over the course of their lifetimes, they made an average of over $1 million more than someone with just a high school degree, and those with associate degrees made $325,000 more than those with high school diplomas.
College degrees are also stepping stones for postgraduate degrees, which offer even bigger payoffs, Abel and Deitz wrote. One other unquantifiable benefit, they wrote, is that college instills in students “aptitudes, skills and other characteristics that make them different from those who do not go on to college.”
In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than