According to a report released yesterday by the National Center for Public Policy, universities in Oklahoma are among the least affordable in the country.
The report, entitled Measuring Up 2008, found that poor and working class families must devote up to 37 percent of their income to attend a public, 4-year university in Oklahoma, even with financial aid.
In addition, poor and working class families in Oklahoma must devote up to 94 percent of their income to pay the net cost of an education at a private university.
The study also found that financial aid for low-income students is down. For every dollar in Pell Grant aid the state spends, only 41 cents is spent on students.
On a national level, the study reports that tuition and fees saw an increase of 439 percent between 1982 and 2007, while median family income only rose by 147 percent.
Stacey Zis, research associate at the center, said it is up to university and state officials to help struggling families pay for a college education.
“Our study shows that in Oklahoma, higher education is very expensive for low-income families,” she said. “In order to make education affordable, either tuition and fees must come down, or financial aid must go up.”
Jay Doyle, OU press secretary and special assistant to OU President David L. Boren, said OU is working to make higher education as affordable as possible by providing more financial aid than ever.
“In the past four years, we have doubled the amount of scholarships we are giving students and have raised $135 million in new scholarship money,” he said.
The report also found that only 63 percent of freshmen return for their sophomore year at Oklahoma public universities, giving the state the lowest freshmen retention rate in the U.S.
Doyle said that OU’s rate of freshman retention is much higher than the state average.
“Our most recent freshman retention rate is at 84.5 percent, which is more than 20 points higher than the state average,” he said.
The report also revealed that the state receives low benefits from higher education, because only 24 percent of adult residents in the state have bachelor’s degrees.
Center president Patrick Callan said that if the state does not improve educational affordability, then an affordable college education might not be possible in the future.
“With the current challenges of a competitive global economy, states need to raise the level of education of their population to help their residents compete,” he said.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
qwerty 3 years, 5 months ago
Only 24 percent of adult residents in Oklahoma have bachelor’s degrees?!
This is shocking to me. Perhaps this statistic correlates with Oklahoma's political tendencies.