Controversial Issue Outline

At four-year public institutions, the average list price for tuition and fees has risen 114 percent, to $9,410 in inflation-adjusted dollars, over the past 20 years. But the average net price has risen by just 48 percent over the same time, to $3,980. Along and steepening decline in state financial support of public colleges is responsible for most of the tuition increase. As measured by dollars of appropriation per $1,000 of income, state appropriations to public colleges and universities fell by 43 percent from 1990 to 2015.

The average list price for private-college tuition and fees rose by 70 percent over the past 20 years, to $32,405. But the average net price rose by just 32 percent over the same period, to $14,890. At most private colleges, prices actually declined between 2008 and 2013. (The university where I work, for example, froze tuition in 2012 and hasn't increased it since.)

So, because of significant increases in institutional financial aid, the actual increase in the cost of tuition and fees has been less than half the increase in the published price of tuition and fees -- but families turned off by high prices never learn how much they would have really paid, because they never applied in the first place.

The affordability of any product or service is partly a function of its price and partly a function of the relative affluence of the consumer. So can today's families afford college? In inflation-adjusted dollars, from 1984 to 2014, those in the top 5 percent of family income saw their average income increase by 79 percent, to an average of $370,085. Families in the middle 20 percent of income saw an increase of 16 percent, to $66,899- But families in the bottom 20 percent of income experienced a 1-percent drop in average income, to just $16,110.

And all of the growth in income was between 1984 and 2004. During the past decade, almost all families saw their inflation-adjusted incomes either stagnate or shrink. For example, families in the top 5 percent saw, on average, no growth in income; the middle-income families saw a 2-percent decline; and families in the bottom percentile experienced a 9-percent decline.

Thus, although the 20-year increases in net tuition and fees at public and private colleges were most likely not a problem for families in the top 5 percent of income, those increases were a real challenge for families in the middle 20 percent and were devastating to those in the bottom 20 percent.

It is understandable, then, on the basis of cost alone, why the percentage of high-school graduates from the lowest 20 percent who enroll in college fell from 56 percent in 2008 to less than 46 percent in 2013.

There is no question that higher-education leaders have a responsibility to make their institutions affordable for students from all income levels. As a group, we have been too slow to acknowledge that responsibility and to respond accordingly. To be fair, however, it is in only in the past few years that we have seen significant price resistance to our costs (some very rich and famous institutions have yet to see price resistance). And in our capitalist system, one tends to charge as much as one can get for a product or service.

Yet a significant part of college affordability rests not with colleges themselves but with an economic structure that, in the absence of policy to the contrary, defaults to a situation in which a few individuals amass most of the wealth. This has occurred at an increasing rate in the United States since the 1950s. The concentration of wealth at the top of the economic spectrum is seen by many economists as an enormous problem: Productivity has increased in virtually every part of the economy, but wages have not come close to keeping pace.

More families are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet because their incomes have not risen along with increases in the cost of living. Big-ticket items such as a college education seem increasingly unaffordable -- because they are.

Yet political leaders appear intent on ignoring the elephant in the room. It is far easier for them to cast blame on colleges than it is to advocate for changes in economic policies that cater to the wealthy and punish the poor and working class. Dealing with the growing income and wealth inequality in this country is the job of state and national political leaders, and it is up to us to ensure that they accept that burden rather than shove all of the responsibility for college affordability back on us.

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By DONALD J. FARISH

Donald J. Farish is president of Roger Williams University.