About $36,576 is no small sum of money. As a means of comparison, a brand new and fully customized Volkswagen Jetta costs somewhere in the ball park of $30,000 (source).
But while that immaculate Volkswagen is a luxury that one could easily live without, more and more Americans are realizing that a college education does not fall into the same category. According to Danielle Kurtzleban of Usnews.com: “The Pew Research Center has found that the earnings gap between millennials with bachelor’s degrees and those with just a high school diploma is wider than it was for prior generations” and “Among millennials ages 25 to 32, median annual earnings for full-time working college-degree holders are $17,500 greater than for those with high school diplomas only. That gap steadily widened for each successive generation in the latter half of the 20th century” (source). [pullquote align=”center”]Prior to Reagan’s tenure in office, the top marginal income tax rate on the weathiest Americans had never below 70 percent.[/pullquote]
$36,576 would be the cost in tuition alone for 4 years at West Chester University, or $9,144 per year, according to collegeboard.org. So without factoring in the cost of housing, a meal plan or groceries, and the cost of textbooks, a West Chester University student will either be paying the bill up front or, like the majority of university students in America, he or she will be borrowing money via student loans, of which the interest will bring the cost of tuition alone well above $40,000.
The WCU mission statement reads: “West Chester University, a member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, is a public, regional, comprehensive institution committed to providing access and offering high-quality undergraduate education…” Maybe it’s just me, but the phrase ‘providing access’ seems to imply that the university recognizes that many of its students do not come from well-off households. How the school can claim to be ‘providing access’ to higher education by way of a $40,000+ system of debt entrapment seems to defy logic.
However, WCU does not deserve the brunt of the blame because they are simply playing by the rules which the government writes.
Thomas G. Mortenson is an independent Senior Scholar at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C. In an article for the American Council on Higher Education, Mortenson writes: “Despite steadily growing student demand for higher education since the mid-1970s, state fiscal investment in higher education has been in retreat in the states since about 1980”, and specifically in regard to Pennsylvania, he writes: “Extrapolating trends since 1980, Pennsylvania was scheduled to reach zero [higher education spending] in 2058. But extrapolating trends since 1990 moved this date forward to 2049. And the rate of decline accelerated further in the last decade: the trend since 2000 will take Pennsylvania to zero by 2038” (source).
So what is the effect of the reduced higher education spending by the state? “Declining state support for higher education leads directly to increased tuition charges for students,” writes Mortenson. He proceeds to cite some alarming data: “Inflation-adjusted tuition charges that were declining in the 1970s have surged since 1980. Inflation-adjusted tuition and fee charges have increased by 247 percent at state flagship universities, by 230 percent at state universities and colleges, and by 164 percent at community colleges since 1980.”
After reading what Mortenson wrote, I became much more empathetic to the university’s situation because they are stuck between the rock and a hard place of either cutting programs to make tuition more affordable, or raising tuition rates in order to keep expanding and improving its programs.
The essential question in my mind after analyzing the data is: what happened in 1980 that caused higher education spending by the government to decrease so drastically? Although there is no simple answer to that question, there is one trend which cannot be ignored.
On Jan. 20, 1981 Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th U.S. president. By advocating supply side, “trickle down” economics in order to stimulate growth, a theory which has been debunked over and over again by many well-known economists, Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy and slashed federal spending on many things, higher education included. Over the next several decades and continuing up until this day, many state legislatures followed suit.[pullquote align=”center”]So what is the effect of the reduced higher education spending by the state?[/pullquote]
Prior to Reagan’s tenure in office, the top marginal income tax rate on the wealthiest Americans had never been below 70 percent. Reagan reduced this rate to 28 percent, setting a dangerous trend in American politics that continues to this very day. By drastically cutting taxes on the wealthy, the government is not collecting the much-needed revenue for higher education, which in turn, leads to skyrocketing tuition fees and contributes to the highest levels of income inequality that our country has ever seen. Obama’s current rate for top earners is 39.5 percent, which is significantly higher than Reagan’s but still almost half of what it was before Reagan took office.
The great Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay: that is the only American principal.” His New Deal policies and the GI Bill, which made college and technical training programs virtually free for over 7 million Americans, created the most prosperous and thriving middle class that this country has ever seen. His marginal income tax rate for top earners was over 90 percent.
I think it’s time for us to ditch Reaganomics for a New Deal.
Christopher Cox is a student majoring in English and journalism. at West Chester University. He can be reached at CC764721@wcupa.edu.