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In defense of the cost increases, two arguments are usually made. First, as costs have gone up, so has the availability of financial aid--hence students of modest means are not being shut out. Second, public higher education is still a great bargain, offered to students at substantially less than cost and, if viewed as an investment, likely to produce a high return in the form of future earnings.
The problem with the first argument is that the fit between costs and aid is not close enough. In most states the cost of education is controlled by one bureaucracy and the dispensing of financial aid by another; increases in aid almost always lag behind increases in costs. Moreover, the parents of students who use state universities as a gateway into the middle class are often unfamiliar with the process of putting together a financing mechanism. Also, some state-university systems have responded to budget cuts by simply reducing their student body. In 1992 and '93, to cite the most notorious example, the California State University system cut 20,000 slots and the California community-college system more than 150,000.
Even if a state-university education pays off richly in the long run, allowing it to go from practically free to expensive changes the bargain between the citizen and the state. For most Americans, public education is the most important government service--important economically, important socially because it binds us together as a people, and important psychically because it represents opportunity, the central American value. It gives a distinctive feeling to this country if, unlike the rest of the world, we offer education at all levels in an open and unrestricted way to everyone who qualifies. This unique and precious national commitment is now diminishing.