The College Fix

In the face of skyrocketing college tuition rates, an unstable job market, and staggering student loan debt, many Millennials have began to question the value of obtaining an undergraduate degree.

The Project on Student Debt recently conducted a study that revealed 7 in 10 college students who graduated in 2012 took out loans to pay back their degree debt – at an average of $29,400 per grad.

Making matters worse, the ongoing economic recession means recent grads no longer have a reasonable degree of certainty in finding a job in their preferred field, or even a job at all.

The repercussions are starting to become evident.

“The total outstanding student loan balance is $1.08 trillion, and a whopping 11.5% of it is 90+ days delinquent or in default,” reports Forbes.com. “That’s the highest delinquency rate among all forms of debt and the only one that’s been on the rise consistently since 2003.”

However, a solution may be in sight.

In 2011, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called on state universities and colleges to create a “a bold, Texas-style solution” to combat the skyrocketing costs of higher education by creating a bachelor’s degree that would cost less than $10,000.

$10,000, as in the grand total. Perry’s proposed price tag includes tuition, fees, textbooks and web-based instruction with “innovative teaching techniques” and “aggressive efficiency measures.”

“Imagine the potential impact on affordability and graduation rates, and the number of skilled workers it would send into our economy,” Perry had said when he initially proposed the idea.

Perry’s challenge came at a time when 57 percent of Americans felt that the expense of higher education was not worth the money that it cost, according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

Four years after Perry’s challenge, at least 13 universities and colleges in Texas have created degrees that at least meet Perry’s price tag requirement, Real Clear Policy reports.

Although some of the programs have been criticized for not meeting all of Perry’s requirements and the limited diversity of the degrees to only math, science and technology focuses, the naysayers miss the larger point – for most students, a single year of college costs more than $10,000.

For the current school year, the average cost of tuition, fees and room and board at a public four-year university is $18,391, and $40,917 for private four-year universities, according to the College Board.

Critics have also questioned the educational quality of the cheaper degrees, but these programs have higher standards than traditional courses of study.

Texas A&M University-Commerce, which offers a fully online Bachelor’s of Applied Science in organizational leadership, marks progression through the program  “through competency-based modules and assessments,” and students must complete “all competency modules and/or assessments with an 80 percent mastery rate” to gain credit.

Perry’s initiative has extended well past the borders of Texas, with other states following suit to create similar programs of study.

All 24 of Florida’s bachelor degree granting state colleges offer discounted degrees after Gov. Rick Scott adopted Perry’s initiative in November 2012

Georgia Institute of Technology offers an online Master’s Degree in Computer Science for $7,000 with a 3.0 grade point average requirement to obtain the degree.

Legislators from Oklahoma and Oregon are in the planning stages of introducing similar discount degrees in their states, according to Real Clear Policy

While the long-term competitiveness of a degree acquired through Perry’s $10,000 degree concept is yet to be determined, one thing is certain – the current system of funding education is broken.

Perry’s solution appears to be the only truly viable idea to combat the rapidly escalating cost of college and help students avoid amassing debt.

College Fix contributor Julianne Stanford is a student at the University of Arizona.

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