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Message: [QUOTE="upstater, post: 3550304, member: 153"] Some facts to put this in perspective: 1. The average tuition in the USA is $7500 at publics. 2. 86% of the college market is in the publics. 3. The rise in tuition is almost wholly related to the drop in subsidy. If you started with $1k tuition in 1990 and you're charging $13k now, the 1,000% increase is a result of the $8k drop in subsidy per student. 4. Instead though, we are slashing education subsidies, so be prepared to see pubic tuition rise above that $7.5k average level. Something to think about though, and I'm not really in favor of this, BUT--if we did decide to go tuition free like many countries in the first world, the amount it would take would not be that much at all. The proposals I've seen require a state to pick up half the tab if the fed. gov't picks up the other half. If you multiply the amount of full-time students at publics nationwide (9m x $3750 tuition), the total would be $33b. If you decided that students must keep some skin in the game and pay, say, $2k in tuition, the total tab costs $24b a year. This is not a super amount of money. It is less than double of what we spend on the National Parks system each year. It's 1/3rd of what we spend per student on kindergarten. Again--I'm not sure I'm even in favor of this given that a significant amount of students (1/4?) are not invested in Higher Ed. even though they attend. But this is one way to look at the funding of it. [/QUOTE]