The warning came on the first day of a two-day investigative hearing before the Governmental Affairs Committee on the Rising Cost of College Tuition. The hearings focused on why tuition costs are so high, to what extent federal financial aid contributes to or mitigates rising tuition, and the impact of debt burden on a student s educational and career choices. Apparently, colleges and universities themselves don t have a good understanding of why tuition rates are rising so rapidly, said Thompson.
Colleges have to do more to make themselves more transparent in explaining their finances.
At the same time, the federal government needs to do a better job of looking at tuition rates that are rising faster than the cost of living. As this Committee has found with government agencies, you have to know the nature of the problem before you can work to solve it. The high cost of tuition has an intense personal impact on individual families, Lieberman said. But if college becomes a luxury that an increasing percentage of the population cannot afford, the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots could undercut the American dream and stunt the nation s economic growth. Senators Thompson and Lieberman noted that the high price of a college education is an issue of growing concern for American families.