RWU President Farish discusses college affordability in Chronicle article

ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY President Donald J. Farish discussed college affordability in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article. / COURTESY ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY
ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY President Donald J. Farish discussed college affordability in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article. / COURTESY ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY

Donald J. Farish, president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, recently penned a column for The Chronicle of Higher Education about college affordability.
Titled “Stop Blaming Colleges for Higher Education’s Unaffordability,” Farish wrote that more than half of families considering higher education for their children use tuition price to eliminate a given college.
He said that students are borrowing “increasingly more money” with total student-loan debt now exceeding $1.3 trillion.
Farish said that at four-year public institutions, the average list price for tuition and fees has jumped 114 percent, to $9,410, in inflation-adjusted dollars over the past 20 years, while the average net price has increased by just 48 percent over the same time, to $3,980.
“The average list price for private-college tuition and fees rose by 70 percent over the past 20 years, to $32,405. But the average net price rose by just 32 percent over the same years to $14,890, and at most private colleges prices actually declined between 2008 and 2013. (The university where I work, for example, froze tuition in 2012, and hasn’t increased it since.),” he wrote.
Over the past decade, Farish wrote, “almost all families saw their inflation-adjusted incomes either stagnate or shrink. For example, families in the top 5 percent on average saw no growth in income; the middle-income families saw a 2 percent decline; and families in the bottom percentile experienced a 9 percent decline.”
As a result, he said the 20-year hikes in net tuition and fees at public and private colleges were likely not a problem for families in the top 5 percent of income, but a “real challenge for families in the middle 20 percent” and “devastating to families in the bottom 20 percent.”
“It is understandable then, on the basis of cost alone, why the percentage of high-school graduates from the lowest 20 percent who enroll in college fell from 56 percent in 2008 to less than 46 percent in 2013,” Farish wrote.
While he said higher-education leaders have a responsibility to make their institutions affordable for students from all income levels, he said political leaders need to advocate for changes in economic policies that favor the wealthy, and punish the poor and working class.
“More and more families are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, because their incomes have not risen alongside increases in the cost of living. Big-ticket items such as a college education seem increasingly unaffordable – because they are,” Farish wrote.

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