ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Tuition at four-year public colleges has increased nearly three times as fast as household income over the past 14 years and more than three times the rate of consumer price inflation, congressional auditors reported Thursday.
The General Accounting Office said in a report requested by 23 members of Congress that college tuitions on average jumped 234 percent between the 1980-81 and 1994-95 school years.
The GAO report confirms parents' hunch, concluding that tuition jumped 234 percent from the 1980-81 through the 1994-95 school years.
That compares with an 82 percent increase in median household income over the same period and a 74 percent increase in the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index.
Two factors were at work, the report said: rising expenditures by schools; and an increasing reliance on tuition increases to pay for them as support from state governments declined.
State support for colleges dropped 14 percent over the 14 years, As a result, tuition accounted for 23 percent of schools' total revenues in 1994-95, up from 16 percent in 1980-81.
At the same time, school spending rose 121 percent. The increase was driven primarily by faculty salaries, which rose 97 percent, and other instructional costs, the GAO said. Administrative costs, meanwhile, rose 131 percent.
``Some of the cost growth, according to existing research, was the result of schools' competition with one another and with industry for high-quality scholars and researchers,'' the report said.
Average salaries also have increased as a result of faculties growing older and more people reaching the higher-paying full professor level.
The GAO reported that tuition for the 1995-96 school year ranged from $1,524 to $5,521 for in-state students. The average cost was $2,865.
In general, the highest tuitions were in the Northeast with the lowest in the in the South and West, the report said.
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