Unfun Facts About the Costs of a Public University

For the past few Sundays, the Star Tribune has been publishing front-page stories that can be read only in the print edition. After a week or so, they'll put them up on their website. This is their most recent strategy to reward subscribers who actually pay for the paper's content.

I'm not sure how it will work for them, but it definitely makes it harder to link to one of those stories the day it appears!

Today's story, written by Jenna Ross and Chao Xiong, is called "Generation Debt," and subtitled "Tuition at the U of M has doubled this decade. How can the average student expect to pay for school -- let alone pay back the increasing debt?"

After noting that 2009 was the first year in history when the amount of revenue the University of Minnesota received from tuition exceeded the amount it received from the state, the story went on to reveal some more unfun facts:

In 1968-69, a student could have clocked 6.2 a week at minimum wage to earn enough to cover annual tuition and fees of $385, according to the U. This year, a student would have to work 33.9 hours a week at minimum wage to cover tuition and fees.

I remember from my days as a student activist at more than one public university that some people would argue that tuition should be higher and state subsidies lower, with financial aid for those who need it used to make up the difference. Why, these people wondered, should taxpayers subsidize everyone, including people who don't "need" the help?

And I also remember there was research that showed higher tuition kept significant numbers of low-income students from attending, even though they would be eligible for aid. The perception of nonaffordability had more effect than the reality of aid availability.

In today's Strib story, that "high tuition with high aid" model is said to be bad for the middle class, too. According to Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education,

"The aid never grows as fast as the cost, so we're always falling behind. Soon, middle-income people start thinking they need some help, too. You can'd do high tuition, high aid without squeezing the middle really hard."

One young woman featured in the story has unenrolled from classes because she owes the U too much money and they've frozen her account. Reading the information given about a person in her situation is frustrating, because there's so much we aren't told about her situation --

When Gamblain enrolled at the U two years ago, her parents earned just enough that she didn't qualify for a great financial aid package. Yet they didn't make enough to fund her education. [She] took out about $17,000 in private loans to subsidize her freshman year. With no co-signer, Gamblain was saddled with a 15 percent interest rate.

She took out all the federal loans for which she qualified for the first semester of her sophomore year, about $8,000. Grants totalled about $700. She was still $3,000 short [of the annual tuition and fees].

Now, I haven't had to deal with the labyrinthine college financial aid process yet, but it seems to me that this young woman or her family got some very bad advice somewhere along the line, and her parents are not doing all they can to help her. Why didn't they co-sign her loan? Could one or two (presumably working) adults really not come up with $3,000 to help their daughter stay in college?

Obviously, I don't know their circumstances, and for all I know they've been laid off from their jobs or have three other kids in school (although both are unlikely, since she'd probably have qualified for more aid in either case), but they've known for years this kid was college-bound. What about a little planning on the part of the adults in her life? Or at least co-signing her loan so she got a better interest rate?

Hopefully, featuring her plight in a front-page story will get the attention of somebody at the U's financial aid office so she can get some decent advice. It's sad that it takes a story like this to get her what she needs.