Here's another way to look at it. My senior year at Muskingum, 1976-1977, the total cost for me to go was 12.5% of our family's income. Today my family would have to make $323,100 to be at that same percentage.

But who do you think is promoting these loans under the guise of "financial aid?" It's criminal what colleges and universities are doing.

Let me take it a step further. Within 2 months of graduation, those same folks get an opportunity to sign up for an official university credit card. And finally, groups of clueless trustees fed a bunch of whitewashed craps have continually voted to raise tuition and create new deans of everything including OZ.

Unless you would actually like to retire one day.

A big reason for student debt seems to be the "college experience" a student wants.
My niece went to a Community College for 2 years.
Then she transfered her credits to a local State University close to home and graduated pretty much debt free.

Had she gone away to college for 4 years the situation would have been very different.

She majored in Criminal Justice which is offered in pretty much every State school around here.

Going to a local Stae University may not be an option,depending on your major.
But there are ways to lower your college costs and reduce debt.

Yes, but, the healthiest Defined Benefit Plans rely on well invested capital and a strong, ever broadening base of contributors which together secure an ongoing lifetime benefit to plan recipients. When those in charge of the plan mismanage the investment capital or allow benefits to recipients to become out of balance with new contributions to the plan you have a train wreck. Now of the key elements described above which exist with Social Security; investment capital providing a real return or a broadening base of contributors in overwhelming numbers to plan recipients? For those still contributing to Social Security, your reality is; work longer, contribute more, expect less. If you are in your twenties I am sorry for the mess my generation is turning over to you. Some things you will need to get right on; the crushing debt and a government that exists to create new entitlements. Was it Socrates that described Democracy as a perversion of Constitutional Government?

I think this is a huge factor in the increasing costs. There are so many more amenities than when I attended just 20 years ago. The cost has more than doubled. Some of the increase is normal inflation, some of it is the extras we didn't have.

Think about the features you have in your car now vs. the one you had in 1990. The things we now consider basic necessities used to be extreme luxuries. Technology is expensive, and there are few places that embrace technology more than universities.

My cable bill is $200/mo, my cell phone bill is $250/mo., and the average price of a new car is $30,000. I compare those two current bills to my first house purchased in 1997, which only had a $450/mo. mortgage. With normal inflation, everything doubles in price every 20-25 years. Add in the luxury items and it's easy to see how the cost of college continues to rise. Until the general student population starts looking for cheaper alternatives, there is no incentive for universities like Ohio to reduce their price.

Tangent:

There are ways to have the college experience, not resort to a community college education and get out of a state university owing just a modest amount of money. It takes forethought and sacrifice.

I made it through 3 1/3 years in Athens with less than $10,000 in loans without working a job, without money from my parents and just a modest amount of scholarship money. It meant not spending every night in a bar or having a car in Athens and finding ways to get textbooks through the library system without paying for them and finding every single thing in Athens that's free to do. It meant not having a credit card that tempted me to spend. Walking on brick streets talking about a book I just read with someone had to become entertainment. It meant loading up on 22 hours of classes every quarter and not switching a major. It's not easy, but it can be done. Get prerequisites out of the way during high school through post-secondary. Don't dawdle your first two years deciding what you want to do. Find something you love and dive head-first into it. (At some point we conflated young people "finding themselves" [a noble pursuit] and kids being indecisive, as if a path will show itself as a bright blinding light in the emblem of their chosen field as they walk across the Richland bridge.)

People roll their eyes at it, but know what you want to do and how you want to do it before you ever step on campus and you can be debt-free just a couple years after you graduate. It just takes a plan and some discipline. The college experience wasn't restricted by it, it enhanced it. I would've missed so many wonderful things in Athens if I'd had access to shinier, entrancing objects and quicker gratification.

I'm adamant about this because I'm scared we'll overreact to the massive amount of debt students carry these days too harshly and go to a for-profit model. I know what I was before I got to Athens and how my mind was reconfigured and remodeled in the most wonderful sort of way because Ohio was a university and not a place I got a diploma. So I worry we'll amputate all these great things about places like Ohio because of a few malignancies. Universities can get leaner. Students can be more decisive and smarter with money. But to say a couple hundred dollars for access to Ping and Division I college football games is just TOO MUCH? It's what makes a university a university.

You should see some of the cars these poor kids drive to school. Most I cannot afford. Walk through the parking lots, it is amazing. The items demanded by some students help drive costs too. We just installed a 90" tv in a study room for student projects. Seems rather excessive to me.

Here's a chart of the resources spent on athletic subsidies at public Ohio universities. I'm sorry, but this is just insane. My hunch is that you'll see the state step in and mandate a cap..say no more than a third of the AD budget.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a323/JT_Production/ueet...

Exactly right. I see this emerging as another bubble that needs to burst just like the housing market. The Gov is funding wreckless spending on college costs that is crippling young adults and has had a significantly negative impact on the economy. People in their 20s and 30s can't spend like they used to because of college debt. The cycle won't stop until the college debt is capped at a reasonable rate and price pressure is put on the colleges in a way that makes the young & dumb be forced to consider price more directly. Then colleges will be forced to cut back, and some won't survive after having to live with decades of wreckless spending of their own.

I just wonder how the number of credit hours compares to the "core" classes students in technical majors have to take.

I know at FDU +/- 20 credit hours of the 128 credit hours needed for a Civil Engineering Tech. degree are "core" classes.
That doesn't include the technical writing classes also needed for a degree.