It’s likely that Elizabethtown College students have all taken some time, however brief, to admire the irony of the College describing itself as “affordable.” This word appears 61 times across various pages of the College’s website.
Anyone with enough sense knows that there is no college in this country that can use that word to describe itself without at least bending its definition of the term “affordable.”
Etown’s comprehensive fee of $45,600 doesn’t even come close to affordable for most families. But Etown has a strong dedication to financial aid. According to the College’s website, 93 percent of Etown students receive aid in the form of grants or scholarships from the College. But as great as financial aid may be, it doesn’t hide the fact that college is expensive.
On its website, the College Board reports that the average comprehensive fee for a private college in the U.S. was $28,500 for the 2011-2012 academic year. Christine Armario of The Associated Press reported in an article in June 2012 that the median comprehensive fee for four-year colleges is on the rise — increasing by as much as 15 percent between 2008 and 2010. Armario attributes such increases to the decrease in funding from state budgets for higher education.
In Pennsylvania, students of the Commonwealth faced a higher-education budget cut of 19.6 percent in 2011, according to the same article by Armario.
While the cost of college increases and states tighten their belts to face a worldwide economic crisis, the high school seniors of the nation are being prepared to go out into a world where a high school diploma alone may be less than sufficient.
In August 2012, NPR’s All Things Considered presented information about the economic recovery and its impact on the value of post-secondary education. The statistics reported, were representative of an economy that favors a college-educated workforce.
“In terms of wages, the study found that people with a post-secondary education have the advantage … For example, if you have a college education and work for a business where half of the employees do not, you probably make 35 percent more than a worker with [only] a high school diploma,” Sanchez said.
Further, Sanchez reported that the unemployment rate for those who hold a college degree is only 6.8 percent. This is drastically lower than the unemployment rate of those whose highest degree is a high school diploma — which is at a dramatic 24 percent.
However, despite the obvious advantage of a college degree, some high school students are not applying to post-secondary programs.
The reason for this shunning of college education is not a lack of interest. Rather, it appears to be a “fear factor,” as US News and World Report’s Kathy Hopkins puts it. The fear is that would-be college-bound students from low-income families are shying away from the college option due to a belief that it is too expensive to even bother pursuing.
In an attempt to counteract this fear, some colleges and universities are offering stronger financial aid packages that appeal to low-income households. Some of these packages are no-loan options that avoid placing low-income students into large amounts of student loan debt.
One such program can be found at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University. Lehigh will not offer loans as part of the financial aid package to households with an income of $50,000 or less.
But not every college can afford to make such sacrifices.
At Etown, with the student body receiving so much institutional aid, the College might lose too much funding if it cuts out federal, state or private loans as an option.
So with all of the above considered, does it seem necessary to call a college education a “luxury?” It doesn’t appear to be so.
Post-secondary education may be expensive, and the cost is on the rise. However, it would appear that a college degree is necessary to support oneself in this economic situation.
Colleges often use the term “affordability” in lieu of another word which would express a more honest idea — value. But perhaps the term “value” is too-often associated with lower-quality concepts to be employed by college admissions. Regardless, the statistics speak of the value of post-secondary education. And something that holds such a value for a person’s well-being should not be considered a luxury.
