Editorial: Tuition costs rise - again

This will not come as news to college students or their parents, and may not qualify as news at all, since it's the same story year in and year out. But the latest figures from the College Board underline a problem to which attention must be paid: Higher education is more expensive than ever, and continues to increase at double the rate of inflation.

The latest increases, reported Monday by the College Board, bring the average list price of four-year public universities to $6,185 this year, up $381 from 2006-2007. At four-year private colleges, tuition and fees rose 6.3 percent to $23,712.

And that doesn't include room and board, which doubles the cost of attending a four-year public college. Average prices can be misleading, especially if you don't have an average student in the family. George Washington University, for instance, just became the first major school to charge more than $50,000 a year for tuition, room and board.

Few students actually pay list price for their education, with financial aid and student loans reducing the out-of-pocket expense. But the College Board found that even net college costs are rising at double the rate of inflation.

To cover these costs, students - and their parents - go deeper into debt. The typical student graduates with $20,000 in student loans to pay off, a number that also goes up every year. The Project on Student Debt reported that total student debt rose 8 percent between 2005 and 2006.

There's no easy way out of this bind. A college degree is more valuable than ever, with a batchelor's worth an estimated $1.2 million in lifetime earnings, which is reason enough for demand to keep rising. That demand drives up prices, and even the rise of for-profit colleges hasn't brought price competition.

Congress recently took positive steps to make college more accessible, enacting a bill that will ratchet up the size of Pell Grants for the neediest students, trim interest rates on student loans and provide loan forgiveness for students entering public service careers. But that bill doesn't strike at the heart of tuition inflation. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., one of the authors of that measure, plans to file a new bill he says will rein in tuition hikes.

All those with children in college or headed that direction should wish him well, as should those with college loans still to pay off. At a time when a college degree is more necessary than ever, it shouldn't be getting more expensive with every passing year.