Reed’s tuition for 2011-12 was only $42,540 (see Tuition, Fees, Room & Board History) so $100K tuition isn’t going to be a feature of campus life anytime soon. However, a front page article (“Ron Wyden puts a number to the soaring cost of college – 439 percent“) in yesterday’s Oregonian pointed out that average college tuition rates over the last 30 years have risen much faster than the consumer price index, must faster than average family incomes, and (this is truly amazing) much faster than the cost of medical care. So perhaps a six-figure tuition bill isn’t that far off?
So could $100,000 tuition be lurking around the corner? I entered Reed’s tuition history from 1969-2011 into a spreadsheet and plotted log10(tuition) versus the academic year (1969 = “69”, 2011 = “111”). The result was a straight line that rose sharply from 1969-1991 and then another straight line that rose more gently from 1992-2011. The linear correlation coefficient, R^2, for the second line was nearly perfect, 0.9947, so I gently extended it until tuition reached $100,000 (that is, log10(tuition) = 2).
The year? Approximately 2030. Only 18 years to go (assuming that we don’t return to the tuition increases of 1969-91).
