Skip to footer

Making college affordable: five ways that states, schools are trying to help

Student debt and skyrocketing tuition make headlines. But this week, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have sought to highlight the silver lining – examples of how states and institutions have been trying to reduce the cost of higher education.

Here are some ideas presented in a hearing Wednesday held by the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, and another Thursday morning before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

5. Give students more money – and help them manage their finances

When states cut funding for higher education, public institutions often raise their tuition. But many try their best to offer more grants to offset that burden, particularly for lower-income students.

Iowa State University, for one, held a fundraising campaign and dedicated more than a quarter of the $867 million in gifts to scholarships. The university increased annual scholarship dollars from $9 million in 2004 to $21 million in 2011, said ISU President Steven Leath on Thursday.

But loans will still be a big part of most students’ approach to financing college, and Iowa State is also trying to help them better manage that process, since surveys have shown that many students don’t understand the implications of the debt they’ve taken on.

“Our financial-award notice letters to students now include – very prominently – their current indebtedness and how much their payments will be after graduation based upon their borrowing trends. The notice also emphasizes that the loans are optional and encourages the use of other methods to pay for their education,” Mr. Leath said.

Moreover, Iowa State is one of only five major universities with a full-service counseling clinic that offers financial-literacy courses and individualized financial advice.

5 of 5
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.