College - at what cost?

My oldest daughter is a junior in high school so this was a good time to spend spring break looking at colleges. I had heard all of the horror stories about how tuition costs have increased much more than the inflation rate. I choose to ignore this fact until now when I can't anymore.

First up was the school that I went to. It's a private school so of course tuition is even higher. When I went there costs averaged about $9,000/yr. When I graduated I got a job paying $28,000. So my 4 year education cost was 130% of my first year salary. Today that education will cost $40,000/yr. My comparable starting salary would be $60,000. So that 4 year education will now cost 267% of that first year salary! And that's assuming you can get your kid in and out in 4 years. All of our tour guide students seemed to be on the 5 to 7 year plan. We also went to several state schools and I'm confident the numbers are similar.

So is today's education twice as good as the one I got? I didn't hear much from the schools on how they've improved the education. All I heard about was how all the dorms are are conditioned and have cable TV. And the highlight of each tour was the new recreation building with rock walls and lazy rivers.

Maybe we should shelve all the talk about healthcare, taxes and redistribution of wealth and address this education issue. It dwarfs all that other stuff.

We were smart (and lucky) enough to start saving for the kids education early on. It ain't gonna cover it all but at least we should be able to make it work. Of course, since we had the wherewithal to save we won't be eligible for any financial aid. Maybe we would have been better off taking better vacations all these years and buying a bigger house.

The progressives always talk about giving the poor a better chance at success. There's no better place to start than education. We all agree that college grads do better in the real world so shouldn't we work on keeping the cost of higher education down for everybody?

Now that’s change I could believe in.