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Here’s an incredible statistic. Last year, the cost of a year in college — public college — rose to fifty-five percent of the median family income of families in the bottom 20% of earnings in the US.
You read that right. For the average family in the bottom 20% of American households, sending just one family member to college will eat up more than half of your total family income for the year.
But financial aid will help with that, right? Wrong. That figure is for net cost, after financial aid has been factored in.
After inflation, tuition and fees at American colleges and universities have risen 439% in the last twenty-five years, and students from lower-income families now receive less aid per student than their wealthier counterparts.
These numbers come from a new a report on college costs from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. As the president of the Center told the Times, these numbers are feeding a growing educational gap between the US and other countries we’re competing against in the global economy. “Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers,” he says, and the situation is likely to grow worse in years to come.
The full report is online here.
Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania is offering free tuition for “individuals who have recently become unemployed due to business or industry plant closing or layoff.”
The program, which has been implemented twice in the past, offers local residents 12 credits worth of classes in career programs, or up to $900 in free non-credit work-related classes.
(Thanks to Bill Shiebler of USSA for the heads-up.)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Read told Gannett News Service this weekend that he doesn’t expect “much of a fight at all” over a comprehensive immigration bill in the new Congress.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the bill is expected to include provisions making some undocumented immigrants eligible for federal student aid, smoothing such students’ paths to legal permanent residency, and rendering it easier for states to charge them in-state tuition rates.
Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida, proposed on Thursday to lift caps on tuition at the state’s eleven public universities, allowing university leaders to raise tuition by as much as fifteen percent.
The Chronicle of Higher Education announced this development with the following headline:
“Florida’s Governor Gives Public Universities a Break on Tuition.”
US Representative Christopher Smith, a fourteen-term New Jersey Republican, has tuition troubles.
His daughter attends the University of Virginia, and the family is saving $20,000 a year by claiming her as a VA resident — UVA’s out-of-state tuition is $14,500 a semester.
Smith’s opponent, Joshua Zeitz, was quick to jump on the revelation, saying through a spokesperson that Rep. Smith’s decision to seek in-state tuition shows “that after 28 years in Washington, he has a sense of entitlement, he thinks he’s entitled to things average folks aren’t entitled to and he ends up spending all of his life in Herndon, Va.”
Oops.
studentactivism.net 
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