Colleges are jacking up tuition, and it could intensify the student debt crisis

• Some colleges are hiking tuition and fees along with boarding and meal plan costs, per The Hechinger Report.
• It's a byproduct of inflation and the labor shortage making their way to campus.

The price tag to attend college is about to get even heftier.

That's because inflation has hit campus, according to Jon Marcus for nonprofit news organization The Hechinger Report. Many universities are hiking tuition and fees along with meal plan and boarding dues to cover rising operational costs and higher salaries for faculty during the labor shortage, he wrote.

The bigger bills are likely to hurt students from lower-income backgrounds and add to the student debt crisis, coming at a time when many families haven't yet recovered from the financial hardships of the pandemic.

"Families and their earnings haven't fully recovered yet, especially as the student population we're more focused on today tends to be first-generation, lower socioeconomic status, more diverse," David Jewell, the senior vice president for business affairs and finance at Cleveland State University, told Marcus of the price hikes, which Jewell is trying to avoid implementing. But, he added, "we've never dealt with this level of inflationary pressure and this kind of extremely competitive labor market."

Some colleges are set to raise their rates for the upcoming school year, while others already have, ranging from 9% increases in meal plan costs to 4.5% tuition increases. The University of Virginia, for example, plans to increase undergraduate tuition and fees by 4.7% next year and again by 3.7% in the following year.

As Marcus points out, many of these increases are below the current 7% rate of inflation. But it's on the heels of a year in which tuition remained relatively stable and in which enrollment has dropped. US colleges have seen a 1.5 million decline in students enrolled over the past five years, with men accounting for 71% of that decline, Insider's Ayelet Sheffey reported.

The news also comes in the middle of a standstill on the federal government canceling student-loan debt. The national student debt total has climbed to a roaring $1.7 trillion, preventing millions of Americans from making big financial decisions like buying a house.

President Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail that he would wipe out $10,000 in federal student debt for every borrower, but has yet to do so, saying that authority lies with Congress. But proponents of full student debt cancellation like Sen. Elizabeth Warren have argued that Biden has the executive power to forgive those loans without needing new legislation.

Tuition price hikes would only add fuel to the fire, increasing the debt loads of current student borrowers and promising bigger loans for future students who can't afford the upfront cost of college. It's another blow to advocates fighting to erase student debt, especially as the two-year plus freeze on federal student-loan payments and zero interest is set to expire come May 1.

The price of an education only continues to climb. In the 2010s, the cost of college had already more than doubled since the 1980s (accounting for inflation) thanks to a surge in demand, an increase in financial aid, a lack of state funding, a need for more faculty members and money to pay them, and ballooning student services. The current state of a pandemic economy is only intensifying the situation.

It's enough to make both students and experts the value of a degree, even factoring in the typically higher wages for college graduates. The "advantage of a degree today is less than it was 10 years ago, because of the rising cost," Richard Vedder, an author and distinguished professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University, previously told Insider. "The return on investment has fallen."