If you're a parent, and you don't suffer palpitations whenever the topic of paying for college comes up, congratulations: You're either unusually mellow, or unusually wealthy. Higher education is expensive, and getting more so by the year.
But how expensive? Ah, that's a trickier question. What we talk about when we talk about the price of a degree can be a bit murky, thanks to the vast variations in tuition, financial aid, and lifestyle choices that determine how much a student spends during their time on campus. For parents paying the tab, and for wonks who'd like to make higher education more affordable, it's useful to have a realistic baseline for how much a bachelor's actually runs these days.
So without further ado, let's look at the numbers.
WHY ONE YEAR OF COLLEGE = $21, 200
In the 2009-2010 school year, the sticker price of tuition, room, and board for a full-time student pursuing a four-year degree was $21, 189, or 34 percent of the median family's income. That's already 10 percentage points higher than the beginning of the decade. Here's a graph of college's sticker price as a share of a typical family's budget going back to 2000.
Thankfully, these numbers are only the beginning of the story. For one, they ignore the gap between state schools, where tuition, room, and board totaled about $15, 000 in 2009-2010, and private schools, where they were just about $33, 000 on average. Meanwhile, thanks to financial aid, mercifully few students actually pay the full sticker price.
WHY ONE YEAR OF COLLEGE = ~$15, 000
To get a more precise sense of what college costs, we need to do two things. First, we should look at "net-price of attendance, " which subtracts scholarships and financial aid from the whole cost of a year at school. This is essentially the budget that attempts to take into account the real cost of a dorm room, late night trips to White Castle, Andy Warhol posters for decorating, and beer money, along with tuition. Once we have that figure, we should break it down by family income level.
Handily enough, the graph below from the Department of Education does both using data gleaned from federal financial aid applications for the 2007-2008 school year. This is intended to tell us how much families were actually paying for school, rather than what they potentially could have paid.
College students skew wealthy, so a kid from the median American family would fall into the chart's low middle-income category.** If that kid dreams of attending a fancy private college, they're staring at $22, 700* per year tab. If they're happy going to a state school they'll pay around two-thirds that price.
There is some reason to be skeptical about the government's estimates. For most students, the most expensive part of attending college isn't tuition -- it's living expenses. To ballpark what students spend on themselves, the Department of Education uses the estimated budgets produced by school financial aid offices. As the graph below shows, those budgets are often quite measly. (For a frame of reference, the poverty line for a single adult is about $11, 000.)
WHY ONE YEAR OF COLLEGE = $14, 000
Thankfully, we can try and check the government's work. For the last several years, student lending giant Sallie Mae has run an annual survey on how students finance their educations. According to their findings, middle income families (who made between $35, 000 and $100, 000 a year) paid $20, 065 for a year of school in 2011-2012, up about $3, 000 from 2007-2008. Those numbers, however, don't account for aid.
Once you subtract scholarships and grants, the net cost comes down to $14, 171, right about in line with the government's estimates.
So it appears your average student has indeed taken a vow of poverty to keep the cost of school down.
That brings us back to the burden these costs place on the typical family. By dividing the net cost of a year at school by the median family income, we get a number I like to call "the college misery factor." Since the turn of the century, the burden of college has clearly increased at both public and private institutions, although its been more severe at the latter.
Unfortunately, the 2007-2008 figures are the most recent data the Department of Education has readily broken down in a useful way for measure. (It's most recent numbers, which cover 2008-2009, divide up institutions into even smaller classifications). But chances are that the misery factor is worse today than it was about five years ago. State schools have raised prices as legislatures have cut budgets. Families are poorer than they were at the end of housing bubble. We can safely say that, for a middle-class household, a bachelor's will cost around a quarter of their income.
如果你已身为父母，当听到有关大学学费的话题时并不感到心悸，恭喜：要么你的心态非常好，要么你很富有。高等教育很贵，并且今年变得更贵。
但是怎样贵？啊，这是个棘手的问题，关于一个学位的价格我们所讨论的内容和事件可能会有一点模糊，多亏了学费、财政援助和生活方式选择方面的巨大改变，这些改变决定了一个大学生在他的大学时光的花销。对于由父母付款，或是那些想使高等教育变得更可负担的书呆子来说，关于一个学士到底花费多少有一个实际的准则是非常有用的。
所以事不宜迟，我们来看下面的数据。
为什么一年大学=21200美元
在2009-2010学年，对于一个四年制全职大学生来说，学费、住宿费和伙食费的标价是21189美元，或者说是一个中等家庭收入的34%。这比本世纪初高10个百分点。这有一个图表，从2000至今大学的花费占一个普通家庭支出的份额。
当然这些数据仅仅是故事的开始。有一点，他们忽略了公立学校和私立学校的区别，在公立学校，在2009——2010年学费、住宿费和伙食费共15000美元，而在私立学校平均是33000美元。同时，多亏了财政援助。只有少数学生才支付全额。
为什么一年大学=15000美元
为了对于大学花费有一个更精确的认识，我们要做两件事。首先，我们应看看“实际的净价格”，是指从一年学校的全部花费中出去奖学金和助学金。除学费以外，本质上预算还应试图考虑住宿费，深夜前往白色城堡，安迪安迪·沃霍尔的装饰海报和啤酒钱。一旦我们有了这些数据，我们就应根据家庭收入水平将它分解。
轻松地，下面来源于教育部的图表使用了2007—2009学年由联邦财政援助提供的数据。这试图想告诉我们家庭实际为大学花费了多少，而不是他们潜在上应付多少。
财富使大学生倾斜，所以一个来自中等家庭的孩子将会掉为这张表中的低等收入家庭类。如果这个孩子梦想进入私立学校，他们会对每年22700的费用凝视很久。如果他们乐意去公立学校，他们只用支付那个价格的三分之二。
关于政府的估计有几点原因值得怀疑。对于大多数学生，入学最贵的部分不是学费——而是生活费。为了估计学生花在自身上的钱，教育部用了由学校财政援助部门统计的估计预算。正如下表显示，这些预算相当可怜。（对于一个参照系，一个单身成年人的贫穷线是11000美元。）
为什么一年大学=14000美元
多亏我们可以尝试和检查政府的工作。对于近几年，学生贷款巨头 Sallie Mae已经发起一个关于学生如何对自身的教育投入资金的年度调查。根据他们的结论，在2011——2012年中等收入家庭（每年赚35000到100000美元的家庭）为每年的学费付20065美元。但是这些数据并不占援助。
一旦你除去奖学金和捐赠，净花费将会降至14171美元，刚好在政府预计的内。
所以呈现给大家的是学生的确为了使学校花费降低而贫穷。
现状：学校的痛苦因素
那将我们带回到对于一个普通家庭这些花费所带来的负担。将中等家庭收入除以在学校的净花费，我们得到一个数据我愿意把它称为“学校痛苦因素”，世纪之交以来，在公共和私立机构学校的负担显著增加了，尽管后者更为严重。
不幸的是，2007——2008年的数据是教育部最容易用来以一种有利于政策的方法分解的数据。（他的最近数据包括2008——2009年，将机构分解为更小的分类），但是机会是痛苦因子比五年前更糟了。随着立法部门切去预算，公立学校已经提高价格。家庭比他们在房地产泡沫结束时更贫穷，我们可以肯定的说，对于一个中产家庭，一个学士将会花费他们收入的四分之一。
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