Since 2002, most colleges and universities across the U.S. have had an exponential increase in tuition prices. According to a Wall Street Journal report of 50 flagship schools — the oldest public university in each state — the median price increase over the course of 20 years for students is 64%. Only the cost of healthcare and gas have risen more than tuition rates. Forbes points out that between 1980 and 2020, there was a 169% increase in tuition costs.

The question is: Why are most higher-education institutions putting the onus on students to foot the ever-growing bill? Aren’t most of them getting funding from the federal government?

The answer is yes … and no. According to the Journal: “Three-fourths of states did cut their support, undermining a longstanding principle that schools educated the populace with government backing. But universities generally didn’t tighten their belts as a result. Rather, they raised prices far beyond what was needed to fill the hole.”

Apparently, the people who are supposed to be the best and the brightest running our universities are clueless as to how budgeting and money work. It’s either that, or they — like the federal government — are practitioners of modern monetary theory. The average school over the course of the past 20 years increased its spending by 34%.

The majority of schools are investing their money into illustrious sports programs, additional (and arguably unnecessary) admin and staff, and offering state-of-the-art facilities to attract the wealthiest students. It is the rare school that has been savvy and caring enough to try to keep prices low for its students. Idaho is one of the exceptions. Purdue is another.

Parents, and eventually students (because few low- to middle-income students can afford not to take student loans), continue to take on years and years of debt, all to pay for the feckless spending of their alma maters.

Many are still beholden to companies that won’t hire people who don’t have a college degree. For others, it’s a matter of family legacy or the pride of being the first college graduate that drives them into this debt. Still for others, it’s just the next expected step in the plan they have for their lives. Very few students at 18 years of age go to college with a specific vocational purpose like lawyer, doctor, or scientist. These young adults end up wasting precious dollars and years trying to “figure out what they want to do.”

And because they are only 18, they have very little understanding of what that amount of debt does to future credit scores and budgeting. Many are so ill-equipped to face the loan payments that they end up continuing to get higher and higher degrees, all to forestall their eventual massive bill payments. CNBC points out that while tuition costs have gone up 169% since the 1980s, income for young workers has increased only 19%.

It is truly a scandal how much these universities are asking students to pay to attend.

There have been some positives, however. Many universities are starting to cull their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dead-weight hires from the payroll. Others are attempting to keep their enrollment about the same as pre-COVID pandemic. And people like Dr. Jordan Peterson are developing affordable online schools.

Most, however, are spending more than they earn — and doing so with little public accountability and with little regard for the plight of the students they are wantonly impoverishing.