Here Are Two Graphs Any Parent Of A College-Bound Kid Didn’t Want To See Today

As we’ve mentioned numerous times over the last few years, college tuition costs have skyrocketed during the past two decades, far outpacing inflation and saddling an entire generation of college-educated Americans with student loan debt that can take many years to pay off. All the while, college graduates aren’t making as much as they did when college was more affordable. Surely the trend of soaring college costs has to level out, right?

Not according to these projections from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which estimate that the total cost (tuition, room, board, fees) of a college education will continue to increase at a rate of 5% per year.

That means that the school that cost someone $40,000/year in 2013 will more than double to $90,000 by 2030. That adorable toddler whose every move you’re documenting on Facebook could be putting you in the poorhouse in 17 years when he starts working on his degree in Frisbee history.

Even the significantly less expensive public colleges will exhaust most parents’ bank accounts, with costs expected to jump from around $18,000 a year in 2013 to nearly $41,000 by 2030. So even if your local Big State U. has an acceptable Frisbee Studies department, your kid will still probably need to take out student loans just to get through.

And since those costs could continue to increase each year, by the time a child born today graduates from college, her education could run her anywhere from $186K for four years to more than $400K. Not many jobs being offered to recent graduates that will help pay down that level of student loans:



[via BusinessInsider]