Back then you may have thought college cost a lot, but nowadays college costs even more. When applying to college students think more about how much it costs rather than if it is a good school for them. Even though financial aid can be provided it is a very small amount of money that is given to the student. Today, the U.S. spends the most amount of money on college alone according to 2018 Education at a Glance report.

Even if there are financial aids and grants that can be given, it is quite rare to get a full ride scholarship to a school. Somehow you will always end up paying a little bit of money. Americans spend about $30,000 per student a year which is nearly twice as much as the average cultivated country.

“The U.S. is in a class of its own,” according to The Atlantic. “Spending per student is exorbitant, and it has virtually no relationship to the value that students could possibly get in exchange.” Andreas Schleicher said.

 The amount of money spent on college doesn’t even come close to what the students are getting back from their education. The main reason why universities charge so much for tuition is that in 2008 there were many cuts and to make up for them they charge more for tuition. On average a public college cost around $9,716 per year and that’s not even including other expenses like room and board and food.

“They moved away from working to educate people in their region to competing for the most elite and wealthy students—in a way that was unprecedented,” Maggie Thompson, the executive director of Generation Progress, a nonprofit education-advocacy group said.

Colleges nowadays are starting to think more about themselves and what is best for them rather then what is best for the students, which is raising tuition. Since college is a service, not a product, it isn’t going to get cheaper. Also, this service is given by people with college degrees, which makes it that much more expensive.

“Unfortunately, the price of tuition varies at every school. And many schools if not all are continuing to increase beyond the rate of inflation,” Sylvia Caruthers, founder of SoCal College Planning, said. “From the college’s point of view they say that their costs are increasing as well, however, it’s really about supply and demand from my point of view. And if families continue to pay for college will continue to increase.

Because families are continuing to pay the given price college’s belief that they can keep raising their rates. Some universities started to enroll more out of state and full paying foreign students in order to make up for the loss of money. For families, however, paying for college can be a struggle and it puts some families in serious debt.

“Many families cannot afford to send their kids to college so they accept loans that are a Band-Aid to their situation. Some families go so far as to mortgage their home to pay for college. And others simply don’t go,” Caruthers said.

The cost of college is so great that some kids don’t even go because of the serious damage it could do to a family. Another factor to why college can be so expensive is, students want to travel away from home and go to college in a different state, and that can cost a lot more than going to a college in your state.

“As the global economy continues to broaden we have students coming in from all over the world. They’re looking to attend the best colleges and will pay top dollar for these coveted positions,” Caruthers said.