As if the Great Recession and Protracted Recovery (our term) weren’t tough enough, Inside Higher Ed cites a report from UPennGSE and Vanderbilt showing that college has become less affordable in 45 of 50 U.S. states since that time.
That’s why we’re doing our part at Junction to make instructional materials more engaging, more effective and more affordable by offering turnkey courses complete with textbooks, videos, readings, discussion boards, flash cards and more for under $50 per student per course. We’ve added early alert systems, an authoring platform for faculty and instructional designers and a new instructor insight center all with an average annual price increase since we launched of 0%. It’s perhaps a small step, but we’re aiming to do our part to help institutions and instructors support #AffordableLearningNow
Another affordability challenge is that full-time students increasingly cannot pay their way through college by working, even at community colleges. And low- and middle-income families often must weigh the trade-offs between attending college and getting a job, a problem exacerbated by stagnant household incomes over the last decade.
That all means loans increasingly fill the gap between educational expenses and what students get in financial aid, according to the report — a serious concern, particularly for less wealthy students.
College has become less affordable in most states, threatening to worsen economic stratification
