In the fall of 1989, the tuition at Cleveland State University was approximately $2,100 a year. In 2026 dollars, that amounts to $5,457. At the same time, minimum wage in 1989 was $3.35 an hour or $8.70/hr. when adjusted for inflation. By the time I graduated, tuition had increased to about $2,500 a year ($5,433 in 2026 dollars), and the minimum wage was increased to $4.25/hr ($11/hr in 2026 dollars).

A college student in the early 1990s working a full-time minimum wage job in the summer could earn $1,700 towards their fall tuition. Although this would not cover a full year, they could continue to work part-time (20 hr/wk) and would have made up the $800 difference in a little over nine weeks. Maybe a full-time summer job wasn't available, or perhaps they decided to lighten their summer or fall work by taking out loans. In which case, a student that borrowed half the cost of tuition might leave school with loans totaling $5,000 (or $10,885 in 2026 dollars). All of this assumes that a student didn't receive any family support, scholarships, or grants.¹

If I were telling this story as a student today, the numbers would be radically different. At Youngstown State, tuition is $11,744 a year, and the minimum wage in Ohio is $11/hr. A student working full-time in the summer could earn $7,400. This would leave them with a deficit of $4,704. Unlike someone attending a state school in the early 1990s, this same student would have to work a part-time job for over 21 weeks to make up this difference.

Why the drastic difference in the cost of higher education? If you ask elected officials in Columbus, I suspect they would claim administrative bloat, run-away faculty salaries, health care costs, or DEI programs. But, as Policy Matters Ohio has noted:

In 1991, Ohio dedicated $7.03 of every $1,000 in state personal income to higher education. This plunged to $6.30 in 2000 and to $4.57 in 2011, a 35 percent decline over 20 years, which surpassed the 31 percent decline seen in the nation in the same period.²

While I could not find the most current number, higher education expenditures in Ohio are down 29% since 2001.³ It's no surprise that students today are facing higher tuition costs, and higher debt.

To be fair, there are other factors that have contributed to increased tuition costs, specifically, the "demographic cliff". The number of high school students has dropped off as a result of the lower birth rates attributed by many to the Great Recession of 2007-2008.⁴ As we know, less students translates into less revenue. But even with the demographic decline, there are still young people that could be attending college who aren't. In 2008, 62.7% of high school students went directly to college. In 2022 that number had dropped 10% to 52.7%.

Here again, there are any number of reasons for the 10% decline. I suspect the underfunding of public education by moving $2.5B in education dollars to private schools through vouchers⁵ might result in some students being less prepared for college-level work. Additionally, the constant disparagement of higher education by many on the right has not helped either. But it is also likely that the lack of affordability (read: state support) is a major part of this decline.⁶

Although many in Columbu would have you believe otherwise, it is not wokeness, indoctrination, unions, or faculty salaries that are the problem with higher education in Ohio. It is twenty plus years of state reductions in funding that are placing an unjust burden on today's students.