Guest Opinion | A real commitment to college affordability

When we were at Ivy League schools, 40 years ago, lofty ideals were affordable. Back in the '70s, the average annual tuition and fees for a private college were around $7,000, inflation adjusted to today's dollars. Four-fifths of U.S. households had annual incomes in excess of that. Student loans were small, seldom more than $2,000 total, and most of those who took them out paid them off quickly.

Regardless of family circumstances, if we wanted to go into teaching, public service or the arts, we did. How unlike now, when so many young people - especially those whose families are not affluent - have no choice but to rivet their ambitions, their careers and their very lives in pursuit of the highest monetary return.

In 2006, the average annual tuition and fees for a private college exceeded $22,000 - a 200-percent rise over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, the real income of the median U.S. household has only risen 30 percent, and today only half of all households have incomes that exceed the average private tuition. Entry-level pay in many fields has declined since the early 1970s, while housing costs have escalated.

Not long from now, the University of Pennsylvania will announce its tuition and fee increases for the 2007-2008 academic year. If past practice holds, this year's hike will again be above inflation. Meanwhile, students and their families will compliantly continue to assume that, in the long run, the price of a Penn education will more than pay for itself.

For most of you, it will. You'll get good jobs, pay off your loans, buy houses, and start families. But for those of you who want to pursue an unconventional or public-service career, that price might get seriously in your way. And many of your peers who go to non-Ivy colleges will be saddled with even more debt and with a far dimmer prospect of ever matching your earning power. For them, the price of their higher education will be a lifelong burden.

What concerns us is that not enough of you, at Penn and elsewhere, will spend your twenties and thirties doing the vibrant and vital work required of every rising generation to advance civilization - be it teaching, fashioning great works of art, challenging injustice, or defending our nation, mainly because the job does not pay enough.

Across America, college graduates often leave school with $20,000 to $50,000 in debt - and dropouts leave with $10,000 in debt and nothing to show for it. For graduates of business and public-policy schools, add another $75,000 to $100,000. For law or medical school, make that $125,000 to $150,000. Compare that to the experience of people today in their late sixties on up (including many of the Trustees and overseers of institutions like Penn), who had no debt at all when they graduated from college.

Controlling the cost of higher education, and of student debt, has become a generational imperative. We have three suggestions for the Penn leadership:

First: Put an end to the 25-year-long above-inflation run-up in tuition by freezing its tuition and fees at 2006 levels at all its schools. At the College, this means holding the line at $34,156, with total charges of $43,960. A University-wide freeze on tuition and fees would cost roughly $25 million, which translates into less than three percent of last year's $900 million growth in the endowment.

Second: Stop treating undergraduate loans as "financial aid." If a college student and his family cannot afford tuition, then the difference should be covered by a reduction in tuition and fees.

Third: Re-target alumni gifts toward debt forgiveness for recent graduates who are currently in modestly compensated employment.

Not long ago, Princeton eliminated undergraduate student loans. In January, Princeton announced a tuition freeze, albeit with a rise in room and board charges that results in an above-inflation total net increase in student costs. Penn can afford to do Princeton one better, by holding the line on both tuition and fees.

Make no mistake: Penn and elite universities set the standard for the cost of higher education at hundreds of other institutions across America. A tuition freeze at Ivy League colleges would make it far more difficult for other colleges to keep pushing up tuition and student debt. This would be of considerable benefit to an entire generation of students who are now, or soon will be, of college age.

Like nearly every large university, Penn receives enormous tax, spending and subsidy favors from every level of our national community - federal, state and local. It must begin to consider what it owes the community in return.

Were the University of Pennsylvania to take these steps, it would be using its great wealth to serve not only the Millennial Generation, but also the highest ideals of our society, culture and nation.

Guest columnists Neil Howe and William Strauss are co-authors of six books about American generations, including Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation. William Strauss can be reached at william.strauss@cappies.com.

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