What happened, anyway? Perhaps like someone else suggested, the availability of student loans means that more people are attending college. However, UT Austin’s enrollment (for example) today is about where it was when I started there in the late 1980s. (EDIT: Maybe the new seats are elsewhere, e.g. U. of Phoenix.) My first semester’s tuition bill was $700 (not a fortune, even back then) although, IIRC, about half of that was for fees, not tuition. Someone else in the thread suggested that even at a state school, it might cost $10,000 for one semester (not sure if that was only tuition & fees, or also included rent, or room & board etc.). That’s more than 14 times what I paid. Maybe I’m cynical, but I have a sneaking suspicion that faculty and staff salaries are not 14 times higher than what they were in the late 1980s (e.g. an instructor making $30,000 then is not making $420,000 today). The other tidbit I remember (though not from what I’d call a neutral source) is that back then, 20% of UT’s expenses were paid via tuition and the rest came from the Permanent University Fund (i.e. West Texas oil money) and/or some other state revenue. I’m guessing that the government funds that used to finance public higher education (e.g. UT’s Permanent University Fund) have been exhausted or repurposed, or someone thought it was a better idea to shift all of the burden onto the students.
