Rampant Tuition Inflation

University tuitions have enjoyed unchecked inflation since the end of World War II.  Each year has been a tiny bite but over the long-term, it becomes clear that very few other sectors have had the  increase exhibited by Education.

During the same time period, if elementary teacher salaries had inflated at the rate of university tuitions they would earn $200,000.00 a year!

Easy tuition loans are probably the main cause.  And if new graduates cannot get jobs, repayment of education debt becomes not only onerous, but impossible.

William R. Cast, MD, the current Chair of the Indiana University Board of Trustees was a classmate in our pre-professional training at Indiana University.  And we were staff members of the US Army Hospital at Fort Jackson during the Vietnam War; he in EENT and myself, the hospital Oral Surgeon.

Bill has since lived and practiced in Fort Wayne , Indiana.  He has founded a hospital, headed a medical software company, manages a fily agricultural complex and become a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest recognition for an Indiana citizen--in my personal acquaintance, he is the closest exemplar of a Renaissance Man that I have met.

I took the occasion to share my concerns with him:

Dear Bill,

After my mother’s recent passing, alev ha-sholem, I was going through her papers and found an interesting bit of ephemera that I think you will enjoy.

I had sent her the enclosed letter from the IU Dental School, listing the requirements for my initial matriculation.  I am sure you received a similar letter from the IU Medical School at the same time.

Although I had marked up the mimeographed page with notes and calculations for monthly amortization payments, a careful reading discloses that my first year of dental school required that I pay a total tuition of $ 430.00.

The intervening years had clouded my memory of the cost of my tuition, but when I was reminded by seeing this remnant from the past, I just couldn’t let it go.

I went to the IU School of Dentistry’s website and ascertained that the current annual tuition for in-State students is sixty times as much.

In comparison, I do remember that that in 1958 a newly graduated elementary school teacher’s salary, in Indiana was about $3200.00 a year.  Had teacher’s salaries enjoyed the same rate of inflation as IU tuition it would infer a present-day teacher’s annual salary of around $180,000.00, which is counter-factual.

Now, I am not bringing this to your attention because I am suggesting that you do anything about this.  Tuition inflation is a national phenomenon, not just an Indiana problem.  Indeed, absent the recession, graduates who could obtain jobs would just obligingly pay off their education debt.  However, when there is no job to be had after graduation, it must seem like a breach of the Social Contract.

I guess that Sallie Mae’s open handed educational loan policy added so much liquidity to the Education Sector, that schools just enjoyed the boom.  Easy money meant never having to say no to any new project.  And I am sure your experience inside the University has afforded you a deeper insight into the matter.

Tuition inflation is a national economic aberration and will require a National solution.  I just wanted to share this with you as your trusteeship might give you access for beginning to address the solution.

Warmest Regards,

Tom Russell