The True Costs of College

Nancy Kendall, Denise Goerisch, Esther C. Kim, Franklin Vernon, Matthew Wolfgram

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030538606
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030538613
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book examines the true costs of attendance faced by low- and moderate-income students on four public college campuses, and the consequences of these costs on students' academic pathways and their social, financial, health, and emotional well-being. The authors' exploration of the true costs of academics, living expenses, and student services leads them to conclude that current college policies and practices do not support low-income and otherwise marginalized students' well-being or success. To counter this, they suggest that reform efforts should begin by asking value-based questions about the goals of public higher education, and end by crafting class-responsive policies. They propose three tools that policymakers can use to do this work, and steps that every person can take to revitalize public support for public education, equity-producing policies, and democratic participation in the public arena.

© The Author(s) 2020

N. Kendall et al.The True Costs of Collegehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53861-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Nancy Kendall¹ , Denise Goerisch² , Esther C. Kim³ , Franklin Vernon⁴ and Matthew Wolfgram⁵

(1)

University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

(2)

Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, USA

(3)

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

(4)

Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

(5)

Center for College-Workforce Transitions, Madison, WI, USA

Nancy Kendall (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Denise Goerisch

Email: [email protected]

Esther C. Kim

Email: [email protected]

Franklin Vernon

Email: [email protected]

Matthew Wolfgram

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

It is increasingly hard to do well in the United States without a college degree. Yet, well-qualified, low-income students are much less likely than their wealthier peers to earn such a degree. Though college holds the promise of fueling socioeconomic mobility, too often in the United States it reproduces socioeconomic inequities instead. This book examines the true costs of attending a public college and the impact of these costs on low- and moderate-income students’ college experiences, academic pathways, and well-being. By deepening our understanding of how college policies and practices result in inequitable student experiences that drive the class gap in college attainment, we aim to generate new policy and political responses that support improved student well-being and equitable outcomes.

Keywords

College costsCollege affordabilitySocioeconomic inequality

End Abstract

Equity and Higher Education

A college degree has never been more necessary for achieving economic security and improved quality of life in the United States (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2010; Bloom, Hartley, & Rosovsky, 2006; Carnevale, Rose & Cheah, 2011; Hout, 2012). At the same time, class inequalities (which in the United States are deeply intertwined with racial, ethnic, geographical, gender, sexual identity, disability, and other inequalities)¹ in college access, achievement, and completion have never been greater. In 2012, only 14% of students from the lowest income quartile had earned a bachelor’s degree; in contrast, 29% from the middle two quartiles, and 60% of students from the wealthiest income quartile, achieved that milestone (Bowen & McPherson, 2016). As Rauscher and Elliott III (2014) succinctly state: “In order for education to be an arbiter of intergenerational mobility,... United States policy must address the wide gap in educational attainment among different economic classes” (p. 283).

While the effects of higher education on individual mobility and well-being have never been greater, a growing body of research indicates that it is becoming harder and harder for lower- and middle-class families to access college opportunities and degrees. The relative gap between low-income and high-income college students’ enrollment has never been larger (Scott-Clayton, 2015), and greater numbers of academically qualified, low-income students are foregoing college or stopping out (Bowen & McPherson, 2016; Long & Riley, 2007). This gap has increased as low-income families’ costs have increased: families in the bottom 25% of the income distribution now have to pay on average almost 60% of their annual income to send one child to a four-year public university (Radwin, Wine, Siegel, & Bryan, 2013).²

The rising costs of college for families (and particularly low-income families) has been fueled by a number of factors, including rapid declines in public funding for public higher education. Facing radical budget cuts, universities often shifted costs onto individual students and families by raising tuition and other costs of attendance (Mettler, 2014). Federal and state financial aid have generally not kept up with increased costs of attendance and the larger number of students who hope to pursue a college degree. As a result, by 2015/2016, the average unmet need for full-time students at a four-year public college was $14,400, but low-income students had the largest amount of unmet financial need (Baum, Ma, Pender & Libasi, 2019). Grant (as opposed to aid) money has been particularly hard-hit: in the 1970s, federal Pell grants covered about 75% of official costs at public, four-year colleges and universities; by 2014, they covered only about 30% of official costs (Goldrick-Rab & Kendall, 2014). State, institutional, and private need-based funding also declined, while merit-based aid—which generally compounds existing social inequities—increased (Doyle, 2010).

While costs for higher education shifted from the public onto individual families and students, constant-dollar wages for “private, middle-class wage-earners” in the United States on average declined over the last 45 years by over 11% (Mislinski, 2020). This decline was not equally distributed; like increasing gaps in wealth and homeownership, it was particularly steep for Black workers, and particularly Black women (Wilson & Rodgers III, 2016). Not surprisingly, then, student loan debt for UW System Bachelor’s degree-holders increased rapidly, more than doubling in constant dollars since 1992 to over $30,000 (Kyle & Shastri, 2018), as students increasingly have to reach beyond the resources available to them and their families to finance their college education.

The consequences of increased reliance on student debt to fuel college-going are again unequal, reflecting racialized and geographical inequities in public subsidies for homeownership, transportation, businesses, and other forms of wealth-creation that have left Black, Indigenous, and Hmong families in Wisconsin facing hurdles in wealth creation that White families on average have not faced.³ In 2016, for example, the poverty rate for Black families in Wisconsin was three to four times higher than for White families, and Latinx and Hmong family poverty rates were more than double the rate for White families (Smeeding & Thornton, 2018). As a result of these historic and continuing systemic inequities, the students in our studies who identified as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color on average had many fewer familial resources to draw on to support their college-going, which in turn meant that the unexpectedly high true costs of college had a particularly negative impact on their experiences and well-being.

This book examines the true costs of attending a public, four-year college, and the impact of these costs on low- and moderate-income⁴ students’ college experiences, academic pathways, and outcomes. The book aims to shift the way we think about college costs and their relationships to students’ college experiences, thereby deepening our understanding of what drives the class gap in college attainment and outcomes and allowing us to propose better policy responses. More specifically, drawing on research conducted from 2014–2016 with first- and second-year, low-and moderate-income students at four public, four-year colleges in Wisconsin, the book aims to provid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Assumptions About Higher Education and the American Dream
• 3. The True Costs of Academics
• 4. The True Costs of Living Expenses
• 5. The True Costs of Student Fees
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter