As part of its ongoing contributions to improving higher education, the Lumina Foundation issued a white paper in August 2015, A Benchmark for Making College Affordable – The Rule of 10. The paper initially references the 45 percent increase in the cost of college over the past decade while the average family income rose only 7 percent over the same period.
Today’s higher education environment vis-à-vis the national economic situation has ignited a debate over whether a college degree is worth the cost. Significant budget cuts in many states have meant that colleges are raising tuitions, increasing fees, and offering less in scholarship money to students. Few students had enough money saved to pay for college prior to the economic downturn which has had a catastrophic impact on many schools (see my daily headline postings and links in the “Impact of the Economy on Higher Education” section of my blog for some examples).
