By Benjamin Davis / The Jambar
Tuition. The great big boogeyman every student fears and dreads, causing many to wake in a cold sweat on a dark, gloomy night — or maybe I’m just projecting. Regardless, it’s something that every student has to deal with at some point in their academic careers.
It’s hardly a surprise that tuition costs in the U.S. aren’t exactly cheap, causing many students to go into extreme debt. According to an article from BestColleges, overall student debt in the U.S. was up to $1.75 trillion in 2025, with the overall cost of education going up 170% over the last 40 years.
But thinking about that got me asking, “Where, oh where, did these high price tags for college come from?” So, gather around children, cause we’re going to learn a thing or two about tuition, and maybe how to lower it along the way.
That same article from BestColleges lists some reasons for why tuition costs have risen over the years. One reason that caught my eye was that tuition prices in the U.S. are not regulated.
The article states that about one-third of other developed nations have a cap on tuition costs at varying amounts, some as low as $2,400 per year. The U.S. does not have that universal limit, which can lead tuition costs to rise when left unchecked.
Another reason listed was the decline in funding for public education. While each state is its own special snowflake and funding varies between them, there is still a general decline in funding for public education nationwide. According to the article, 32 states spent less on higher education in 2020 than they did in 2008.
This decline in funding is also listed as a reason for rising tuition by a 2025 article from the Earnest Blog, where states began to pull back funding for higher education in the wake of the recession in 2008.
Earnest listed some other reasons, with one being higher salaries for university executives. The article states that administrators, such as university presidents, have been receiving increasingly generous compensation. The example they give, the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, has a salary of over $1 million. The pay of a private university president can be even higher than that.
The final reason that caught my eye was the costs for athletic facilities, such as gyms and stadiums. According to Earnest, universities will often spend a significant amount of money on these facilities to either attract more students or increase athletic ranking. Also according to the article, in 2023, there was an overall 26% increase in spending to upgrade athletic facilities.
Now I know I just threw a bunch of reasons at you for why tuition costs have increased over the years, but how can we actually lower them? Well, I may not know much about this world, but some potential solutions seem to lie within the problems themselves.
The U.S. doesn’t have a cap on tuition costs. Well, maybe someone somewhere should suggest we get one. Maybe universities should cut back on spending for stadium and executive paychecks, or maybe we should try to elect state representatives who are more supportive of higher education.
Will this magically make tuition go away? Of course not. But changing things up a bit probably couldn’t hurt if it means dropping that $1.75 trillion in student debt. And hey, who hasn’t wanted to get a bit experimental from time to time?