Government Funding Importance, its Role in the College Cost Problem, and Potential Solution

College Cost Problem
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Abstract
Skyrocketing college fees and massive student loan debt have put university and college spending in the spotlight. While many high school graduates look forward to beginning their college careers and jumstarting their future, parents are worried that the rising costs of college education could be a huge obstacle. Over the past decade, the average cost of tuition and fees has outpaced the rate of inflation by more than 3%, meaning that it is now harder for parents to take their children to college or for college graduates to finish paying their student debts (Powell, 2017). Parents have to spend more on their children in one academic year than they spent on children to themselves during their whole college period. An increase in college spending has been attributed to factors ranging from broad economic trends outside higher educational control that increase the price of highly educated employees to an all-out competition among universities and colleges vying for excellence, high ranking, and prestige (Desrochers & Kirshstein, 2014). Others also claim generous salaries, declining faculty workloads, and perks for top colleges and university employees, expanding administrative bloat and wasteful spending (Hoffower, 2018). Whether these factors play declining government or state funding to higher education institutions should be analyzed when investigating factors contributing to the college cost problem.
Keywords: college, fundings, education, institutions, cost
College Cost Problem
In recent years, discussions relating to higher education have tended to focus on the rising costs of college (Abel & Deitz, 2014). Is higher education accessible all to students regardless of their financial background? How is the cost of higher education split between the government, students, and their families? News of $25,000 or more tuition fees has evoked thoughts that college has become unaffordable (Hoffower, 2018). Some people suggest that the government should continuously allocate and increase funds to cater for higher education. This paper addresses the importance of government funding, its role in the college cost problem, and its potential solution. The thesis of this paper is: The rising college costs can be solved if both federal and state governments prioritize higher education and work collaboratively with the private sector, students, and families to ensure the average student can afford to attend college.
Importance of Government Funding
Government funding enables students to acquire learning equipments such as textbooks, computers, multimedia, laboratory equipment, and other learning material through vouchers schemes. The voucher scheme purposely provides equipments to students at a lower price compared to the actual market price (Kirk, 2014). This enables lecturers to employ the most up-to-date equipment for teaching in the classroom, making the learning environment more realistic. In other cases, simulation is used, such as in real-world situations. Some part of the allocation is used in building educational structures in the university and college institutions, increasing students' capacity.
Government spending on education is critical to increasing the number of trained workers available to meet labor demand in various industries. Government expenditure in the education industry is a sort of subsidy granted by the government to reduce actual education costs paid by students (as customers) and educational institutions (as producers) ( Romano & Millard, 2011). Normally, education institutes receive subsidies to offer tuition fees (price) lower than the actual fees (cost) that students must pay. Furthermore, if a private college successfully attracts more students to enroll, the government will provide a subsidy to students and employees. It serves as a motivator for college students and staff to recruit additional students.
Salary payments, allowances, and pensions for teachers and lecturers are all included in the subsidy. This budget is critical for ensuring high-quality learning by hiring experienced teachers and experts in relevant subjects ( Romano & Millard, 2011). The subsidy allotment also includes spending on a lecturer training scheme to increase the quality of instruction by involving more skilled instructors (Kirk, 2014). In other words, this strategy is known as development expenditure among academic personnel. This ensures that higher education instruction is more effective and efficient to generate more skilled workers and meet the needs of the economy's industries.
Scholarships and study loans are available from the government for university or college students. It is significant to students because it is a form of human capital investment that can benefit people and society in terms of future income, competitiveness, and productivity (Kirk, 2014). On the other hand, without a scholarship or student loan, students must fend for themselves and pay for their education. At the same time, some students who should profit from education facilities given may not continue their studies since the expense of tertiary education is too high for disadvantaged pupils (Kirk, 2014). As a result, skilled labor will be in short supply in many areas across the economy. As a result, one approach to address market failure is granting scholarships and study loans to students who wish to continue their education.
Literature Review
A systematic literature review is done by identifying, analyzing, studying, and understanding all the information on the selected subject. This method provides valuable knowledge of the study and, as such, plays a vital part while making decisions.
The selected topic for the review is “How the college cost problem can be solved.” I only used relevant academic literature journals published from 2006 to 2021. Knowing that valuable and detail-oriented may be missing in the journals, I searched Google Scholar to obtain relevant scholarly information.
I selected ten peer-reviewed journals, each of which has college cost problems or high college fees, in its article title from the course site database of information, Brightspace, and other sites. For each journal, I examined the article abstracts, the title for each article, and the content page for important information. The method for using an article was (1) the article should be reviewed; (2) The topic should be speaking about the cause of high college’s fees and its potential solutions (3) The aspect of the article should focus on college cost problem caused by reduced government funding. Keywords for the search in all the sites included high college fees, government funding, a potential solution for college cost problem, and the duration set was 2006 to 2021. Consequently, 180 journals, 36 from Google Scholar and 144 from Bright space, were chosen for review.
Findings
Following the recession in 2008, states in the U.S severely reduced education funds, with a median state fund dropping by 23% (Archibald & Feldman, 2014). Since the recession, universities and colleges have increased tuition fees due to ever-rising costs and declining state funding. Since the 2008/2009 academic year, tuition fees at various colleges had risen by 25% by 2015, with the cost rise higher in Georgia (67 %) and Arizona (above 81 %) (Romano et al., 2011). In the last 20 years, the cost of enrolling in a college or university has increased massively due to the decline in government funding (Mitchell et al., 2019). The respective levels of contribution by states and the federal government have signficantly decreased thereby affecting higher educations, which have traditionally relied on support from the two entities (Zhang et al., 2016). The federal government has been providing college sistance through the financial assistance it offers to individual learners while states have primarily paid for the general operational expenses of public institutions.
However, both the amount given to individual states and colleges has been declining over the years. This development hurts students from poor backgrounds and minority populations more than any other student population because they need the state funds to ensure that college remains within their reach as well as federal funds to pay for both college fees and tuition. Even with the recent increases, state spending is still well below historic levels: overall state funding for both public two- and four-year colleges for the year 2017 was less than that given in 2008 by $9 billion, even after adjusting for inflation (Pavlov & Katsamakas, 2020). The funding decline has resulted in higher tuition and lower quality of education in most campu...