The high cost of tuition at American colleges and universities is a relatively recent development. Most public colleges in the United States—and even some private ones—were originally founded as tuition-free institutions. As late as the 1960s, tuition at most state schools was either completely free or low-cost to residents.
That changed in the 1970s when a sluggish economy put a squeeze on state funding for higher education. At the same time, the advent of federal student loans shifted the burden of paying for college more heavily onto individual students and families. The new tuition charges started low, but quickly snowballed.
“In the 1980s, you get these year-after-year, double-digit increases in tuition,” says Charles Dorn, a professor at Bowdoin College who studies the history of education in the United States. “By the time we’re into the 1990s, a college degree is becoming almost unattainable for people from less-privileged backgrounds. When that happens, you’ve got people who are shut out of higher education in some ways for the first time historically.”
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