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Increase in price of college met with rise in income
By Christopher Cottrell on 4/19/07
Financing a post-secondary education is becoming more expensive every year. However, as tuition costs rise, so have the average incomes of incoming freshmen's families. Today's freshmen are financially much better off than previous generations, according to a report from the University of California at Los Angeles. Students claim they see evidence of this trend at AU as well.
The average college student comes from a family whose income is more than 1.5 times the national average, according to the report by UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies.
The report, "American Freshmen: Forty-Year Trends, 1966-2006," claims today's college freshmen come from families with median incomes 60 percent higher than the national average of $44,400. The current median income of such families is approximately $74,000 per year, whereas in 1971 it was $13,200 - $66,200 in 2006 dollars, 46 percent above the national average.
According to the College Board's 2005-2006 Annual Survey of Colleges, only 2 percent of all full-time undergraduates at four-year institutions are enrolled in schools like AU, where tuition costs range from $27,000 to $29,999.
AU tuition costs as listed in the 2006-2007 University Catalog totaled $29,206 per year, a 13 percent increase from tuition cost levels in 2005, and a 263 percent increase from those of 1977. Records of this data were attained by The Eagle, courtesy of the University Archives and Special Collections office. These amounts do not reflect other costs of room, board and additional mandatory fees; however they do account for inflation. In this period of time education costs went up less than general inflation, which rose about 345 percent from 1977 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The ever-increasing tuition costs are reflective of increasing median incomes. AU's tuition costs mirror an ever-growing upper-middle class income rate.
According to the report by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, "The increase in [upper-middle class] income outpaced the national average by a two-to-one ratio and accelerated during the mid-1980s," a time when the average tuition of private four-year institutions also increased by 36 percent.
The average college student comes from a family whose income is more than 1.5 times the national average, according to the report by UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies.
The report, "American Freshmen: Forty-Year Trends, 1966-2006," claims today's college freshmen come from families with median incomes 60 percent higher than the national average of $44,400. The current median income of such families is approximately $74,000 per year, whereas in 1971 it was $13,200 - $66,200 in 2006 dollars, 46 percent above the national average.
According to the College Board's 2005-2006 Annual Survey of Colleges, only 2 percent of all full-time undergraduates at four-year institutions are enrolled in schools like AU, where tuition costs range from $27,000 to $29,999.
AU tuition costs as listed in the 2006-2007 University Catalog totaled $29,206 per year, a 13 percent increase from tuition cost levels in 2005, and a 263 percent increase from those of 1977. Records of this data were attained by The Eagle, courtesy of the University Archives and Special Collections office. These amounts do not reflect other costs of room, board and additional mandatory fees; however they do account for inflation. In this period of time education costs went up less than general inflation, which rose about 345 percent from 1977 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The ever-increasing tuition costs are reflective of increasing median incomes. AU's tuition costs mirror an ever-growing upper-middle class income rate.
According to the report by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, "The increase in [upper-middle class] income outpaced the national average by a two-to-one ratio and accelerated during the mid-1980s," a time when the average tuition of private four-year institutions also increased by 36 percent.
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