College Further From Poor’s Grasp, Study Shows

College tuition costs have increasingly eroded Americans’ family finances over the last two decades, and current state budget crises are starting to make matters even worse, a new analysis says.

A combination of big tuition hikes and lagging increases in financial aid has hit the nation’s lowest-income families especially hard, the report found. The percentage of their income required to pay for tuition has nearly doubled since 1980.

The report, released Wednesday by the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in San Jose, said that “only the wealthiest families have seen their incomes keep pace with increases in tuition. The lowest-income families have lost the most ground, and this is a major factor in their lower rates of college attendance” than students from higher-income families.

The analysis did not evaluate the state-by-state impact. But the center, in an earlier evaluation, ranked California as one of the best in the nation in promoting affordable higher education, largely by maintaining the lowest community college tuition fees.

According to the new report, Americans--particularly those from high- and middle-income families--continue to flock to college in record numbers.

But, the report said, students and their families have paid for college by working longer hours, cutting back on other types of personal spending or borrowing more heavily.

Borrowing to pay for college increased among students from families at all income levels during the 1990s. For seniors from low-income families attending public four-year schools, debt loads averaged $12,888 in the 1999-2000 school year, up 69% from 10 years earlier, even after adjusting for inflation.

Patrick M. Callan, president of the think tank that produced the report, said “the need to borrow a lot of money is a real inhibitor for some students to enroll” in college, especially low-income students.

To provide a rough measure of the impact that higher tuition is having on families, the center compared the rise in college attendance costs with Americans’ income growth over the past two decades. The analysis found that, among families whose earnings are in the bottom 20% of the economic ladder, average tuition at public four year-colleges amounted to 25% of their annual incomes in 2000. That was up from 13% in 1980.

Callan said that most low-income families actually pay lower percentages of their income to cover tuition, because these families often receive some cash aid to offset college costs.

Still, he and other researchers maintained that the report’s figures accurately reflect the general trend of an increasing burden on families, particularly low-income families.

Sandy Baum, a Skidmore College economist specializing in higher education finance, concurred with the report’s finding that for the lowest-income families, college “has become dramatically less affordable.”

She added that financial aid alone can’t solve the affordability problem.

“We need to think about how to deliver quality education without having [college] costs go up as rapidly as they have been,” Baum said.

Other experts, citing the wide availability of student loans, argue that factors such as poor high schools that provide weak preparation for college are an even bigger barrier than cost for low-income youths.

The report noted that recent double-digit tuition increases by public schools in states such as Virginia, North and South Carolina, Washington, Illinois and Ohio are expected to further squeeze families financially.

Those tuition increases are intended to offset state cutbacks in higher education spending due to a faltering national economy.

California faces a budget shortfall of $20 billion or more, but so far the state’s university and community college systems have proposed no fee increases for residents for the coming school year.

The report noted that sharp tuition increases are typical during economic downturns, even though they deepen economic hardship for many families.

“This is a cycle that needs to be broken,” Callan said. He added that California approved “egregious” increases in fees during the state’s early 1990s recession.

The report points out how policymakers at the federal level, and in many states, increasingly have directed educational finance benefits to middle-class families rather than the poor.

The federal programs benefiting the middle class include the Hope Scholarship tax credit and the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit, which were enacted in 1997.

The credits are available to joint tax filers earning up to $100,000 but provide no benefit to families earning too little to pay taxes.