FIU Study: College becoming unaffordable to Middle Class - Sun Sentinel

FIU Study: College becoming unaffordable to Middle Class - Sun Sentinel

With 15 percent tuition hikes starting this fall, FAU students will pay more than $17,000 a year, including room and board. FIU students face similar costs.
Meanwhile, the Great Recession has shrunk median household income to $48,772 in Broward and $49,660 in Palm Beach County by 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau reported. In fact, the American middle class finished the last decade poorer and in fewer numbers than when the 21st Century began, according to a Pew Research Center report released Wednesday.
As a result, college is becoming unaffordable to a growing number of South Florida families and students, unless they go deeply into debt, concluded Bruce Nissen, a co-author of the report and chairman of the advisory committee of Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy.
"Students are being priced out of an education," said Nissen, who also worked with researchers at the New York-based