Taming the Tuition Beast

It's not news that the cost of a college degree has risen significantly over the last couple of decades.

Since 1990, tuition and fees have risen by nearly 225 percent at four-year public colleges and by 154 percent at private four-year colleges. The real story is that tuition growth rates often fluctuate wildly from year to year -- which makes it hard for families to plan ahead and budget enough to cover the costs.

Last year, students at Villanova faced an unexpected tuition and fee increase that was double the previous year's.

Students entering Penn State in 2002 had no way of knowing that their costs would increase by 30 percent by 2006.

Such stories are echoed across the country. To take just one example, members of Arizona State's class of 2005 were stunned to learn as sophomores that their tuition was to rise by 39 percent in less than a year.

These shocks to the pocketbook no doubt contribute to the nation's 33 percent college dropout rate.

There is a solution to the problem. Recently, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., of Bucks County, teamed up with a former Newt Gingrich lieutenant, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., to sponsor a "Truth-in-Tuition" amendment to the pending College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008.

Despite the opposition of college lobbyists, the House of Representatives passed the amendment in early February. The bill is now in a joint House-Senate conference committee.

If the Murphy-Myrick truth-in-tuition plan becomes law, colleges will be required to change their traditional practice of announcing tuition and fees for the next academic year only a few months before the fall semester bill is due.

Instead, schools would either present each incoming freshman class with a multi-year tuition and fee schedule or give families a nonbinding estimate of what they can expect to pay after financial aid is taken into consideration, assuming constant family income. If a school goes the non-binding estimate route, they'd also have to disclose how much their past estimates have been off on average.

Every public college in Illinois is subject to a state truth-in-tuition law. George Washington, Baylor and many other institutions of higher education have successfully instituted such pricing practices. Other colleges have gone even further, guaranteeing a fixed annual cost for all four years.

Many college officials resist the idea of providing price estimates, arguing that forecasting revenues and costs four years into the future is too difficult. But these same administrators have little trouble entering into expensive multi-year contracts with professors and coaches, or long-term financing agreements to pay for extravagant building projects, including sports stadiums.

Some public universities rightly argue that they lack the authority to set tuition rates. But there is no reason that state tuition-setting agencies cannot be held to a truth-in-tuition standard. They worry that state funding cuts drive tuition hikes.

But that's just the point. It shouldn't be easy to boost tuition and fees dramatically to back fill every state budget cut.

College tuition undeniably is a drain on the wallets of American families. It does not, however, have to be an unpredictable surprise from year to year. Families won't like seeing that their costs may rise 10 percent one year and 20 percent the next. But at least having such information at the start of a college program will provide students and families with crucial information they need to plan their finances.

As families in Pennsylvania and across the country struggle to make college payments, the least our universities and states can do is to be up front about the true costs of getting a degree.

If, as seems likely, they won't do this on their own, Congress should require them to.