That is a 17% less increase in students to faculty. This raise in faculty and smaller raise in the student body has caused college costs to rise disproportionably. The average student is paying for the difference of the increased faculty members in their tuition, which makes it harder to pay. .
Secondly, the cost of financial aid is one of the most commonly used excuses for rising tuition. "The fastest-growing expense at Penn and nearly every other university is financial aid. Like many other universities, Penn has nearly half of its students receiving some form of financial aid" (White 2). If large amounts of the student body are receiving financial aid, the college feels it can burn the candle at both ends and charge students more. The run-around on this is if the colleges lower their tuition, the student would require less financial aid. I don't feel the colleges would do this. These unfair reasons why college costs are so expensive seem hard to pass on the average student. .
Thirdly is the phenomenon of the artificial rise in tuition for the name or status of the college. Examples of these are the Ivy League schools whose costs can reach into the mid $30,000 for one year and universities that are hard to get into. They have high tuition costs for students who are accepted. "At a Washington higher education seminar an administrator at one Michigan college joked the he was considering writing an "honest" tuition-increase letter to parents, saying that the school is maintaining high tuition for prestige rather than, as asserted in previous years, to offset rising operational costs"(Hood 5). This good reputation allows schools to set their tuitions high and raise them if they want to. There is some truth in the saying" you pay for the name" as far as colleges goes. I don't feel this is fair to the average student wanting a good education and having to pay the higher price. .
