Letters to the Editor: I paid $50 per semester for college. Why is tuition so much higher today?
To the editor: There’s a serious problem in this country when people connect a college education with a job. (“College costs are beyond absurd. Here’s a way to rein them in,” Opinion, April 30)
I grew up with my parents and a disabled older brother in a one-bedroom apartment. There was never a question about me going to college to get an education, not a job.
I went to Brooklyn College in the early 1960s, a highly rated New York City college that I got to by public transportation. Many well-known people graduated from there. The tuition was roughly $50 a semester.
That would be $530 per semester today, adjusted for inflation. The current tuition at the school is nearly $3,500 per semester for New York state residents.
The problem with higher education today is the ballooned cost of administration. Cut the overhead and solve the problem.
Herb Adelman, Del Mar
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To the editor: The solution is not to somehow charge lower tuition for majors that pay less later, as columnist LZ Granderson suggests. It’s to go back to the state support of higher education for all.
That was the case when I went to school, and college costs were low enough that a part-time job could pay them. I earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering with neither student debt nor any help from my parents.
Eventually, the feds decided an endless supply of tuition money could be offered as student loans. States reduced their support for higher education, the universities increased tuition, and students took out loans.
It is going to be tough to go back to the old model. The government’s offer of endless loans changed everything.
Now the president wants to forgive many of those loans. That will fix nothing. Some critics warned what an endless student loan supply would cause, and they were right.
The federal government should stop student loans and encourage states to support their universities and lower tuition for all students, regardless of major.
Douglas M. Chapman, Santa Ana
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To the editor: Did Granderson just give the game away?
Essentially he is promoting a major discount on the degrees that are the easiest to politicize. That seems to play into the old right-wing argument that colleges are merely incubators for Marxist and woke ideology.
Eduardo Delgado, Moorpark
