College tuitions have risen dramatically over the last two decades, with the average private four-year college costing parents $14,755 in 1991. Today that same four-year private college would cost $23,712 (2007 dollars), according to statistics released by the College Board.
As Accuracy in Academia has documented, some scholars attribute the rising costs to ever-available federal financial aid, and some to an unnecessary emphasis on higher education.
But Duke University’s former financial aid director, Jim Belvin, asserts that federal financial aid has “many positives,” including a “streamlining” effect and raising awareness about the availability of loans.
“The resources they’ve made available are, in some institutions, it would appear to be the only real source of assistance available to many of students. So that’s been important,” he told the Chronicle of Higher Education. Belvin currently serves as a consultant for Duke and will retire at the end of this year, having served 32 years at the University.
Belvin told the Chronicle that he worries that the federal streamlining process could go too far. “I worry, though, that the continual emphasis on streamlining and continual emphasis on simplification could end up overdoing the process, creating or taking away the opportunity to make rational and thoughtful decisions about eligibility for resources,” he said. “Unfortunately I don’t see in the future a time where there will be ample resources to go around and that there’ll be no need to make the kind of fine distinctions in ‘ability to pay’ that I think in a limited-resource world are important.”
His most important advice to parents: save early.
“The one thing if I were to sort of leave the profession with a wish…it would be that my college in the future and the institutions that support them focus on family financial planning—getting families to start planning for their college expenses early,” he said. “Money saved early is so, so more valuable than money saved late. Families can make a staggering difference if they will begin early.” He said that the “new systems” don’t penalize parents for saving, but encourage it.
He added that paying for college is a team game and “but the player that’s perhaps most important in the long run is the parent.”
“Everybody can save on a little something and a little something saved over time can really make important differences.”
Of course, if tuition costs keep rising more than 6% annually, the money that parents save is going to be worth a lot less by the time their children enter college.
Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
