Together, independent institutions graduate over half of all students who attend four-year colleges in the state. I also serve as Chairman of Tuition Plan Consortium, a non-profit consortium comprised of a growing group of independent colleges and universities from across the country. By the time of our planned program launch, we hope to include several hundred institutions. Ours is a diverse membership including institutions such as Rice University, a major research university in Houston, Texas, and Ithaca College, a small liberal arts college in upstate New York. Working together to help American families, we are developing a nationwide prepaid tuition plan that encourages parents, grandparents, and other family members to save now for the future college expenses of younger children.
Education is a top concern for American families.
But when asked what they worry about most, many say they do not know how they will pay for their children's education. We thank you for your past support and urge that once again Congress act to help independent higher education respond to the public's anxiety over how to provide for the cost of their children's college. Today, for many middle income families, paying for higher education means going into debt. In fact, families incurred more college-related debt during the 1990s than the previous three decades combined. The cost of not saving for college when children are younger and then having to rely upon loans, increases a family's burden enormously.