The graduation rates are not suffering solely because of financial issues. Many factors affect student success and attendance at a higher education institution. These can consist of simply being unprepared for college academically or lacking proper support or guidance. However, one issue outweighs most others, and that is the rising costs of attending a higher education institution.
Roughly thirty percent of families in the United States are labeled as "low-income" recipients. With a number so staggeringly high, it would only make sense that the government pays a serious amount of financial attention to these people. According to a graph found in the article "Reforming Student Aid" by Patrick Reimherr, Tim Harmon, Julie Strawn, and Vickie Choitz, compared to 1982, college tuition and fees have increased nearly five hundred seventy percent, while maximum pell grant reception has increased only two hundred nineteen percent. With figures this offsetting, it is obvious why lower income families struggle to get through college. In an article titled "Who can Afford it? How Rising Costs are Making College Affordable for Working Families" by the California Postsecondary Education Commission, a graph shows the total percent of yearly income needed to support a college student for working families. This graph shows that in 1975, only forty-four percent of a family's total yearly income was needed to put their child through the University of California. Now, or in 2005, the costs have skyrocketed to over eighty-two percent (CPEC). That means that over The costs of college continue to influx, while the maximum amount of financial aid given to families is not increasing as relative. If we do not stabilize these numbers, the graduation rates in the United States will continue to be mediocre, and other countries will continue to surpass us in higher education. Another aspect of the graph has to do with average family income from 1982 to now, and how it has only increased by one hundred forty four percent, a number that does not even remotely correlate to the five hundred seventy percent increase of college tuition and fees.
