Between her expectation of the job market and the debt from her annual $10,000 loan, College of Communication senior Chelsea Merget said she is feeling the strain of higher education.
“I took out personal loan payments, and so did my mom and so did my dad because this school is that expensive,” Merget said. “And you don’t really have the option to not go to college in this country. You have to go, whether you can pay for it or not.”
Addressing the Federal Student Aid Conferences staff on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suggested that colleges take steps to curb their costs and help minimize student debt.
“I want to ask you and the entire higher education community to look ahead and start thinking more creatively – and with much greater urgency – about how to contain the spiraling costs of college and reduce the burden of student debt on our nation’s students,” Duncan said.
Duncan said that throughout the last decade the net price of college has risen nearly 6 percent per year after inflation and that it is due to an expansion in federal aid and tax credits that tuition costs and fees for college students have decreased.
“Three in four Americans now say that college is too expensive for most people to afford,” Duncan said. “That belief is even stronger among young adults, three-fourths of whom believe that graduates today have more debt that they can manage.”
BU tuition has increased less than the average, with a 3.9 percent increase this year and a 3.7 percent increase the year before that, according to statistics provided by Media Relations.
Although BU does not have the advantage of receiving funding from state subsidies and taxpayer dollars as public institutions do, BU spokesman Colin Riley said that its tuition increase remains below average each year.
“For students attending Boston University, there is no such contribution, and yet we still are able to, in the past decade, keep our tuition increases at a percentage below the national average,” Riley said.
However, he said his comment does not mean to insinuate that BU is inexpensive.
Even with tuition increases below the national average, students said that they feel the current and future strains college costs put on them and their families.
Nicole Enriquez, a freshman in the College of General Studies, said she is paying her tuition entirely out of pocket.
“Right now it’s okay, but as semesters go by it’s going to cause problems,” she said.
Brett Engwall, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said that his mother has taken on the task of funding his college education without loans.
“I know for me, coming from a family of three, where we all intend to pursue higher education, it’s been hard,” Engwall said. “My mom started working to help pay for my college. We’re trying to not take on any loans, but if prices keep rising, it’s going to be hard”
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