It’s no secret that college costs have risen over the past few decades. The average costs have risen by 1,120 percent since 1978 while the cost of medical care(another thing that has only gotten more expensive) has risen 600 percent in the same time period. The cost of college has led to a massive rise in student loan debt; this number currently tops $1 trillion as of 2016. The rising costs have led to this becoming an important issue; many millennials believe it is unfair that they are being saddled with more debt just for wanting to become educated and have more opportunities in life. It has also led to a lot of doubt at the value of a college degree and political debate on both sides of the aisle on how to fix the issue and better prepare our kids for college.

A lot of people, especially on the side of universities, claim that the cost increase is unavoidable and being caused by rising demand for college and Baumol’s cost disease. They say that the cost of a college degree has risen in part because more and more Americans are going to college. This is shown by the following:

So it is quite clear that more and more people have gone to college. But this has been going on gradually, with massive surges among women and minority groups. The rise has been associated with greater government support for education, especially the post-WW2 GI bill and the civil rights movement. While they do have a point, enrollments have plateaued this past decade, but college costs keep on rising. The data also shows that the real cost has not continually risen since WW2 ended:

In fact, real costs declined during the 1960s and 1970s even while far more women and people from minority groups enrolled in college.

Another argument is Baumol’s cost disease. This theory states that in professions that are very labor-intensive and have slow productivity gains like classical music, academia, and healthcare, wages and thus costs will rise in order to keep pace with other sectors of the economy that do experience productivity gains. This is used to justify higher costs by explaining that faculty salaries and administrator salaries have increased, thus justifying higher costs in order to pay for their higher salaries.

There is a flaw with that argument; the real income of full time professors hasn’t increased that much. It grew slightly faster than consumer prices did since 1978.

And universities also rely far more on adjuncts and part-time faculty than full-time faculty today:

The academic job market has become very bad in recent years due to the decline in number of tenure-track jobs and tenured positions at many universities, coupled with the rise in the number of PhD’s awarded. So the academics are obviously not benefitting from the increase in college costs. The amount of administrators has thus gone up, benefitting from the increase in fees and other costs. This graph showing the situation in the University of California system shows an egregious example:

This shows that the lion’s share of the proceeds have gone to administrators over the faculty, thus contradicting the argument of Baumol’s cost disease. Colleges have been “more productive” with providing education by relying more on adjuncts and part-time faculty who earn less and have fewer benefits, but still charge more and more due to the increase in amount of administrative personnel. While the growth has been for some legitimate reasons, the shocking increase definitely shows that college administrators are enriching themselves at the expense of students and their families.

A legitimate reason for the rise has been a decrease/stagnation in state appropriations, especially in the wake of the Great Recession:

While college enrollments have risen in the past few decades and college has been seen as important to the future of America and the success of young people, states obviously haven’t made higher education funding a priority. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. But even worse is that universities chose to raise tuition fees even during the recession instead of cutting costs and tightening their belts; they still continued to hire more administrators and build more buildings, while preferring to cut academic positions. It is clear that there is something wrong with our universities.

The issue is that students and their families are being squeezed and have little more left to give. With parents being asked to take out loans on behalf of their children to pay for college and some parents even taking money out of their retirement accounts, it is clear that the system is becoming unaffordable for the vast majority of American families. It is making it much harder for young people of modest means to get ahead in life and succeed. It is becoming an unaffordable burden for so many families, often making it simply impossible to realize their dreams of seeing their children succeed and get ahead in life. This problem is contributing to the growing income inequality in our society as well and is a serious threat to social mobility in America.

So why aren’t students focused on protesting the dramatic, often ludicrous rise in college costs? It is not for general apathy; college students are hard at work protesting police brutality and racial and gender problems that linger in their universities. But outside of the UC system, there has not been a general protest movement to protest these increases and force college administrators to take action and change their priorities. It is time for Millenials to form such a movement; it is in our best interest to mobilize and demand change, to protest this just like college students in the 60s and 70s protested the Vietnam War and conscription. Because this issue affects all of our lives and our families as well, regardless of race, gender, national origin, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or political orientation.

This is not to say college administrators are inherently greedy or corrupt. Most of them are decent people, but they are in a position to look out for their own interests. They want more prestige for their universities and more buildings/programs; they are not readily willing to make hard decisions and cut spending. The problems they have contributed to seem rather ironic given that most universities are run by liberals/people who lean left-wing. It is ironic that the generally progressive/liberal administration of these universities would help perpetuate economic inequality and burden students and their families, but it seems that they are ignorant as opposed to being actively malicious. It is clear that college students need to unite with the faculty and send a message to the administration, to educate them on what they are doing wrong and how to fix the growing problem with our nation’s universities. The federal government can also help as well; it can force universities to take action to cut costs by restricting federal funding as a threat. This same tactic was used to desegregate the universities rather than individually forcing them to desegregate by law and could help out here. In any event, this is a pressing issue that needs to be tackled now.