The most pressing challenge to undergraduate education in the United States is arguably its sharply rising cost. In a 2013 Bloomberg News article, Michelle Jamrisko and Ilan Kolet assert that tuition expenses have increased 538 percent since 1985, compared with a 286 percent jump in medical costs and a 121 percent gain in the Consumer Price Index. Jamrisko and Kolet further write that “the ballooning charges have generated swelling demand for educational loans while threatening to make college unaffordable for domestic and international students. The ‘skyrocketing’ increases exacerbate income inequality by depriving those of less means of the schooling they need to advance….” The rising cost of higher education in the U.S. is clearly about more than learning; it reaches into the very definition of American society and severely limits fulfillment of the long-touted and distinguishing claim of this country that accessible education rivals hereditary privilege as the path to achievement.

June 19, 2015 ・ From Inside Higher Ed