The Increasing Costs of Your Children’s Education

For parents contemplating the costs of sending their children to a good University, the future looks rather daunting. The cost of tuition continues to increase in the US and the UK, more and more parents in the Middle East are struggling to deal with the costs of sending their young ones to University.

In the UK, yearly tuition at a top-tier University has tripled in the last decade; in the United States, the already pricey University fees rose by about 150%.  British Universities charged, on average, anywhere from £6,000 to £9,000 in tuition for the 2012-13 academic year. That's a 300% increase from just 10 years ago when the cost of annual tuition at university was capped at £3,000.

In the US, tuition at public institutions averaged about $13,500 in 2004-5 academic year; now it's closer to $20,000 per annum, an increase of about 150%. The price of good education isn't just keeping up with inflation—it's outpacing it by a significant margin.

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Although there are many options for students whose parents make below a certain average income per year, both the US and UK governments penalize the children of moderately well-off parents. Since the 1980’s the US and the UK have emphasied “means testing,” a nice way of saying that parents that earn more can expect to pay more for their child's education than parents that do not earn as much.

Twenty years ago, or even just 10 years ago, parents of young children could afford to delay thinking about saving for the cost of college until their children had at least entered adolescence. Public subsidies for Universities are falling fast, and parents are being called in to make up the difference. Today, parents should start saving for tuition whilst their children are still in Primary school.