A 500% Increase in the Cost of Going to College
by Newt Gingrich
Posted Aug 28, 2006

If you find yourself also worrying about the cost of educating your children and grandchildren, you're not alone. As I reported in the Fox special, the price of a public four-year college education increased by more then 500% from 1981 to 2003. Five hundred percent! All other consumer prices rose by 140% in that same time period.

When I was a college professor 25 years ago, the average cost of attending a private college was about $3,600 a year and the cost of a public university was about $1,600 a year. Today, a year at a public university will cost an American family more than $12,000. And a private school? That will cost on average $29,000 a year, and for some schools, much, much more.

So what does that mean for a family like the Pattersons? It means that Jenna's dad, Joey Patterson, took a second job on weekends and still couldn't save enough to send her to college. And the same is true for most Americans. A family that earns the median income of $44,000 a year has to plan on spending a third of its annual income just to put one kid through school -- and that's before taxes. the rest