In general, students across all income brackets are paying less for college, adjusted for inflation, than they did six years ago at all types of institutions. In some cases, those drops were especially high, including for low- and middle-income students at the nation's wealthiest private colleges; their average net price dropped 28.1 percent and 30.8 percent, respectively.
I could not, for the life of me, just compute: How is this money just sitting? And at that moment, I just had students' names popping in my mind and having a real social awakening moment because I was like, this feels so unfair. How is this possible?
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. took a chance on me as a 19-year-old college student. At that age, as an intern in 2009, I should've been pouring coffee, maybe making copies. Instead, he put me to work on college affordability policy, youth violence prevention, and immigration reform at his Rainbow PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) Coalition on the South Side of Chicago.
After stitching a clip of Economic Liberties Senior Legal Fellow Katherine Van Dyck testifying in front of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, where she dropped the unfortunate data that while almost 50% of parents believe they are going to help their kid get that college scholarship for sports, only 2% of kids actually end up getting them.
It can be scary to borrow large student loans to finance an expensive college degree. There is a market failure, however, every time a student does not attend their preferred college, study their preferred major, or pursue their preferred career because they are afraid of student loans. Students should be free to pursue their passions - not forced into second-best choices because of the cost of the degree or the prospect of a lower income in the future.
Lowering college costs, boosting accountability and reforming accreditation will likely be at the top of congressional Republicans' to-do list for 2026. But as public approval ratings for President Trump continue to decline and midterm elections loom, higher education policy experts across the political spectrum say congressional conservatives could be running out of time. The push for more affordable higher education has been gaining momentum for years,
The tool, developed by Phil Levine, an economist and college cost transparency advocate, uses just one data point-household income-to predict how much it will cost for a student to attend that college. The estimate aligns a prospective student's family income with the incomes of current students. Based on what those students pay, it then provides a range of possible tuition prices, as well as the tool's "best estimate" of what the cost will actually be.
