The College Affordability Debate in Historical Context

Discussions about college affordability often focus on the immediate and obvious: tuition levels, student debt, declining public confidence, institutional finances, etc. From my vantage point however, the current moment appears to be part of a much longer cycle that traces the relationship between public investment and higher education throughout American history. I have come to view today’s affordability debate as part of a longer macro-cycle in the relationship between public investment and the cost of higher education. At its core, the affordability debate is a debate about cost allocation: who benefits from higher education and who should bear its cost.

I have seen five relatively distinct phases in the evolution of how we have answered that question. Viewed through this lens, today’s affordability challenges appear less surprising.

Higher education’s origins in the US: For most of early American history, higher education operated essentially as a private enterprise. Colleges and universities served a small segment of the population and their financial models reflected that reality.

Societal investment: Over time, government began to view higher education as an opportunity to increase the number of citizens contributing to the overall public good. The creation of land-grant institutions through the Morrill Act, the expansion of public universities, and the massification resulting from the GI Bill reflected that growing belief that a more educated population produced benefits extending well beyond the individual student. Higher education was worth the increasing governmental investment at both the state and federal levels. The scale of that investment changed the entire sector as enrollment grew and expectations shifted. It also forced private institutions to reconsider their role within a rapidly expanding system.

Market correction: Private institutions were therefore forced to adapt to a landscape in which public colleges could offer comparable credentials at substantially lower direct prices to learners. Necessarily that adaptation extended beyond tuition strategy to academic programming, student services, and the overall campus experience. In many ways, our modern higher education model emerged from this period of underlying competition. Still, the overall system functioned reasonably well while the public investment remained substantial, largely because many of the funds ended up at private institutions too, and that educational diversity has long been recognized as one of the greatest aspects of higher education in the US.

Societal disinvestment: What followed, however, was a gradual disinvestment. Beginning in the last few decades of the twentieth century and accelerating through successive economic downturns, state support in particular failed increasingly to keep pace with institutional costs and enrollment growth. This is the source of the popular, if dark, joke that state schools used to be “state supported,” then became “state-assisted,” but now are only “state-located.” As funding diminished, institutions were forced to turn elsewhere for revenue. More of the cost was transferred to students and families. Debates about whether public subsidies reduced or increased affordability became increasingly common, reflecting growing uncertainty about who should bear the cost of higher education.

Market re-correction: Unsurprisingly, the growing share borne by students and families over time created pressures of its own. The affordability concerns that once sat largely in the background moved increasingly to the center of the national conversation. Now we find ourselves experiencing another market correction, one that is increasingly difficult to ignore or dismiss. Institutions of higher education have been built around or evolved to adapt the assumption of broad public support. Their cost structures, facilities, staffing models, and academic offerings developed over decades within that framework. Yet the funding model has changed, gradually at first but with increasing speed. For a time, adjustments such as tuition increases, aggressive enrollment growth, fundraising, and auxiliary ventures seemed viable options for bridging the growing gap. Today, the limits of that arrangement are becoming undeniable. Learners balk at the price and question the value. Governments have shown little appetite for restoring support at historic levels. Institutions, meanwhile, remain responsible for operating systems designed for a very different financial reality.

Whether one considers greater public investment in higher education as desirable or undesirable, the current affordability debate becomes easier to understand when viewed through this historical lens. This moment in time cannot be explained by any single political philosophy or societal reflection of value. Our current tension emerged from a sequence of rational responses to previous conditions. The result is a higher ed economy caught between two assumptions: one inherited from an era of robust policy support and another from a market increasingly unwilling to pay the current cost. Viewed this way, the affordability debate is less about tuition itself than about the evolving question of who benefits from higher education and who should bear its cost.