How Did American Universities Influence The Cost Of Higher Education

As the years passed the American educational institutes started to grow and prosper. More and more higher educational institutes opened in the United States. The people of America started to attend college to become better human beings and to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. As the educational institutes grew so did the need for funding. During the years of World War II were the golden age of funding and new partnership between the federal government and educational institutes in America. According to the article, “The Association of American Universities: A Century of Service to Higher Education 1900-2000” the Association of American Universities, an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education, states, “During World War II, universities made important research breakthroughs that helped win the war and laid the basis for sustaining federal support of basic research at universities” (par.

With these breakthroughs in technologies they gained favor with the federal government and gained financial support. During these golden years one could attend Universities such as Pennsylvania State for as little as $985 a year including tuition, housing, general fee, and text books. This amount in todays money would be around $8,000 to $16,000 a year. Looking at the chart on the bottom of the page created with data found in the archive and record center of Pennsylvania State displaying the costs to attend it (“University History”), one can observe that the change in the cost to attend a top university was constant with a 10-year span, with an increase seen in 1946 and another seen in 1948. What this chart display’s is that education institutes did not raise its fees for long periods of times due to the fact that education was seen as a way to better one’s own