Matt Bowman Source 3

What should the government do about rising college costs?

Price, Tom. "Rising College Costs." CQ Researcher 5 Dec. 2003: 1013-44. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.

Costs at public colleges climbed a whopping 14 percent in this period. This continues a long trend of higher education prices surpassing inflation. Further, the average total cost of attending a private school jumped to $26,854, making it well beyond the means of most families. Federal grants to students attending college have not kept pace with these rising costs, and, on the same note, state appropriations to schools have not kept up with increasing enrollment. Colleges want increased government spending on higher education, but, in the eyes of Republican leaders, they are wasting money. This has led the same congressional leaders to consider penalizing schools that raise prices too high. In the wake of budget squeezes and no government action, more colleges are self-reducing costs in innovative ways.

The biggest clarification I got from this article was that federal student aid isn’t the whole problem, as I understood it from the last source, but that it just can’t keep up with rising costs from college themselves (due to things like lavish facilities and getting students to come for higher quality education). Most of the article correlates well with my last one; it even gets into the idea that raising federal aid to students actually encourages colleges to raise prices so they can gobble up the federal increase. This difference is in the solution that is proposed. The article states this, “The Affordability in Higher Education Act, introduced by McKeon in October, would deny some federal funds to institutions that raise tuition and fees substantially above the overall inflation rate. The measure would establish a “College Affordability Index,” defined as twice the Consumer Price Index. If a college raised tuition and fees by more than the index over a two-year period — with some exceptions — it would be required to explain to the U.S. Education Department the reasons for the price hike and provide a plan for holding down prices in the future. If the college continued to exceed the index for three more years, it would lose any federal student aid dispersed on campus, such as work-study funds and Perkins loans. The federal government would continue to offer students direct aid, such as Pell Grants and Stafford loans, although the size of the loans could be restricted.” This solution is very compelling to me. I agree that it holds a ton of potential in solving the issues because funding is the only real leverage the government has on rising costs of colleges. I think the only way to better it is to somehow find a compromise between it and the opposition, mainly in that the problem could also be solved by cutting tuition and not spending money on need-based aid, negating much of the then raised issue that college is less accessible to needy students.

This article mostly converses with my others in that it finally states a direct solution to rising college costs. This is really the first concrete solution I have found worthy of more examination and tweaking by officials. It kind of sums up where the problems start by using ideas similar to what is found in my other articles. I tend to agree with this article more, though, because the solution it proposes seems more plausible in my opinion. The last article started in on the subject of what needs to be done exactly but stopped after it made its initial claims. This article proceeds to take it further and give an exact rundown of how to lower costs. By taking the idea of simple education I received from the second article and pairing it up with this solution, I am tending to see that what needs to happen is government intervention on the level McKeon states and education on a lower level. My synthesis here, then, is mostly a compromise between ideas. Sometimes bits and pieces of different ideas are useful when taken out and out together and I think that’s what we are seeing here.

I think the most logical next step is to look for some more evidence to back up the solution I’m at right now. I need to look for some sources that can tell me what might happen in different situations (meaning what will different solutions bring about). Without knowing much about the implications of the solution I’ve been led to, I feel like I am naively researching if I go any further.