dollars and disparities

The front page of today's Indiana Daily Student (the student-operated newspaper that serves the Indiana University Bloomington campus) featured the headline "Ivy Tech enrollment surpasses IU."

According to numbers released by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, Ivy Tech Community College enrolled 120,447 students for the 2007-08 academic year, making it the largest public post-secondary school in Indiana. IU enrolled 118,952 students for the 2007-08 academic year.

Excerpts from Lindsey Erdody's article:

IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre explained that there are a few reasons why this happened.
One explanation is IU has been working closely with Ivy Tech over the past few years to make transferring credits easier.
“I think a number of students intended to take advantage of that,” MacIntyre said.
By making this connection with Ivy Tech, IU is now more desirable, MacIntyre said...

Another explanation is IU has recently dropped certain two-year associate degree programs. Now students seeking those degrees have chosen to attend Ivy Tech.

University spokesman aside, the article failed to mention the startling numbers (which provide better answers as to why more students are choosing community college) contained in the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, "Measuring Up 2008." Fewer students -- and their parents -- are finding traditional four-year universities a viable option for post-secondary education because it simply isn't affordable. The growing disparity between median family income and college tuition is alarming, and as this country grapples with a harrowing economic crisis, don't expect that gap to narrow anytime soon.

I've included some key figures from the report below:

• Published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent

• Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families

• Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000

Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (which is a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education), encapsulated the study with the simple yet alarming observation, "If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education."

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