By John Byczkowski and John Eckberg
Enquirer staff writers

Jack Riegert, 6, hugs his mom, Patti, at home in Trenton. Patti and husband Chad Riegert aren't able to save for college for Jack and 4-year-old Savannah (left) because parochial school in Hamilton costs so much. The Enquirer/MEGGAN BOOKER

Before Malcolm Simmons can save for his 1-month-old son, Javan, he has to pay his own way at Miami University at Hamilton.

Chad and Patti Riegert of Hamilton have seen the numbers, and they are daunting: After more than doubling over the past five years, tuition at public, four-year colleges is going up between 8 percent and 16 percent this fall.

How, the Riegerts wonder, will they ever pay for 6-year-old Jack's degree? And 4-year-old Savannah's?

If tuition continues to climb at its current pace, today's first-graders could face staggering prices when they head to college in 2016.

By that time, a year's tuition at the University of Cincinnati could be $19,300, up from $8,400 this fall. A year at Northern Kentucky University could be $19,000. A year at Ohio State: $17,600.

And that's not counting costs for room and board - easily thousands more.

If the past 12 years have seen unprecedented increases in costs, the next 12 will determine whether college really is available to all. Coming years also will determine to what lengths families like the Riegerts will go to pay for their kids' degrees.

Experts see the scenario unfolding this way: Costs will continue to climb as states cut back on financial support.

Federal grants that have helped millions of kids go to school may not expand much beyond what they are today. More college students will be taking out bigger loans than ever.

Nationwide, educators are concerned that soaring costs will prevent some young men and women in the next generation from even trying to get a degree.

"As we continue to load more and more of the costs onto students, we're going to close the door to some students who can't afford to pay," says James Votruba, president of Northern Kentucky University.

"There's a growing debate about whether that's good for the country," Votruba said.

Nobody, however, is predicting an end to the strong demand for college. Public universities are creating new scholarships to help low- and middle-income students. And the benefits of a degree continue to grow.

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In 2003, recent college graduates earned two-thirds more than those with just a high-school diploma - a gap that has grown wider over the past 30 years. Over a lifetime, a college degree can mean $1 million more in earnings than a high-school diploma.

As the Riegerts and other young families plan, these trends are worth watching:

It will keep climbing

Since 1990, tuition has increased 213 percent at the University of Cincinnati. It has gone up 273 percent at Northern Kentucky University; 184 percent at Miami; 282 percent at Ohio State.

A year at private Xavier University currently is $20,100 - up a compound average rate of 6.7 percent a year over the past 15 years. At that rate, tuition will top $40,000 a year in 2016.

These escalating costs are where reality collides with public policy that values accessible college for all.

The biggest factor behind rising tuition is lagging state support. In 2000, states spent more than $56 billion on higher education - nearly triple the amount spent two decades earlier.

Yet that amount covered just 35 percent of college costs in 2000, compared with 45 percent in 1980.

In Ohio, state support for higher education fell 3 percent from 2001 to 2004, while tuition rose on average more than 30 percent.

In Kentucky, state appropriations rose just 3 percent from 2001 to 2004, while tuition rose on average more than 50 percent.

The long-term trend isn't expected to change, says Tom Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C.

The rising costs of Medicare and primary and secondary education take priority in state legislatures, he says. "When you look at what's left over, higher education goes to the end of the line."

While state support is falling, expenses are rising for utilities, employee health care and the latest technology.

Miami President James Garland says the university doesn't have much choice about raising costs. "We don't want to keep pumping up tuition, but we have to cover our costs somehow. We do it through a series of tradeoffs," he says.

"If the tradeoff is to keep increasing class sizes, keep cutting back on services, keep letting the campuses become more dilapidated, not making an investment in new technology - if that's the tradeoff - between doing that and raising tuition a few hundred dollars, we think it's in our students' best interests to pay the extra money, although we hate to have to ask them to do that."

Private universities may have it even worse. While state universities and colleges count on tax subsidies to replace furnace boilers, roofs and sidewalks, private colleges have to turn to tuition, donations or endowments for the cash.

Private colleges find it difficult to compete with the physical plants of tax-supported universities - broadband wireless Web access, for instance, or state-of-the-art fitness centers that offer wall-climbing, indoor running tracks and workout rooms full of exercise equipment.

James S. McCoy, associate vice president of enrollment/management at Xavier University, has seen an escalation of the amenities war in the past three decades but says private schools compensate with more personal service.

"A school of 10,000 or 50,000 can say they provide one-on-one contact. But at a school of 3,500 - that's what we do. We take a deep interest in our students, and they recognize that."

Federal grants aren't growing

John K. Ritter of Batavia has two children under 3 years old. Like many people with an array of financial needs, he will struggle to fully fund even one college savings account.

"The day my daughter was born, I ran the numbers on what I would have to put aside - $562 a month - up until the time that she went to college," says Ritter, a financial planner.

"Say the stock market will return 9 percent a year. College education costs are going up 6 percent to 7 percent a year. Even if you're putting money in the market, you're basically barely keeping up with college inflation," he says. "It is the very, very rare person who is able to fully fund a college education."

Federal grants aren't helping much.

Members of Congress are "not going to give us an extra three, four, five billion dollars to throw at this. There's just too many priorities, whether it be a war in Iraq, defense spending, homeland security, Medicare," says Rep. John Boehner, a Republican from West Chester who also is chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Boehner is shepherding renewal of the most important federal college law there is: the Higher Education Act, which regulates how $70 billion over six years is distributed to colleges, students and their families - including the federal Pell Grants, which provided $11.7 billion in aid to 4.8 million low-income students last year.

"All the institutions are all over us about increasing the maximum Pell Grant award, which is going to be very difficult to do," he says.

Because the number of students who qualify for Pell Grants is rising, "every $100 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award costs the federal government $400 million," Boehner says.

The maximum Pell Grant award of $4,050 hasn't been raised in three years. The limits of what families can borrow under Stafford Loan plans - bank loans where the federal government pays the interest while the student is in school - haven't changed in a decade or more.

"The goal of the Higher Education Act ... was to ensure greater access to higher education for low- to moderate-income students," Boehner says. "That goal is being threatened today because more and more moderate-income students are finding it virtually impossible to go to the school of their choice."

More loans, bigger amounts

Nobody has to tell Alisha Rust, a sophomore at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Delhi Township, that paying for college quickly leads to big debt.

Even with multiple scholarships, holding down two work-study jobs and a penny-pinching approach to higher education, Rust will be deep in debt by the time she graduates in 2010 with a doctorate in physical therapy.

"It's frightening to be looking at $75,000 in debt at my age," says the 19-year-old Cold Spring resident. "And I don't even know if I can find a job to pay it off when I graduate."

Today, loans are the primary way people finance college, according to the College Board, a New York City-based nonprofit association of 4,500 colleges and universities that annually offers scholarship information, advice and reports to 3 million students and parents.

In 2000, seven of 10 college students had a loan debt that averaged $17,800. Of that, $15,100 was still owed a year after graduation, according to the National Center of Education Statistics.

Part of the reason more students have loans is that more loans are available and at favorable rates. Some analysts say that's a good thing: More loans enable more kids to go to college.

In addition, for some new graduates, low interest rates and higher salaries after college mean the debt isn't any more burdensome than it was a decade ago.

Even so, the cost of attending Miami University's Hamilton branch is a debt that 25-year-old Malcolm Simmons thinks he will have for the rest of his life.

"The last time I looked at how much I owe, it was easily - easily - over $35,000," says Simmons, a Hamilton resident with a 1-month-old son, Javan.

"And now they've just gone and upped tuition again? It's ridiculous. You just might as well say that you're going to be in debt for the rest of your life."

For Simmons, what's particularly troubling is that he's still paying for his own tuition when he should be saving for his newborn son's education.

"Guess I have to hope that he's a really good basketball or football player," Simmons says. "Maybe he can get a scholarship."

Maybe - but few students get them. A sampling of the area's 10 largest high schools found that fewer than 3 percent of graduates will attend college on a sports scholarship.

Demand stays strong

Despite the difficulties, the demand for college is expected to stay strong.

College applications nationally are at record levels - and are projected to climb higher. The same is true at local schools: The University of Cincinnati welcomed its largest freshman class in a decade last fall - 4,553 students - and applications this year ran 8 percent ahead of the year before.

Miami University will turn more students away, allowing only 3,300 to 3,500 freshmen out of nearly 15,000 who applied, up 7 percent from the year before. Xavier has seen a record number of applications for its second straight year, 4,610. And Northern Kentucky has seen records every year since 2001, with roughly 2,800 applying this year. That's up at least 47 percent since 2001.

Soaring tuition has been minimized somewhat by new grant programs from the states. In 2002, Ohio handed students $98 million, an amount that had grown 37 percent in three years. In 2000, Kentucky created merit-based Educational Excellence Scholarships, which paid $58 million to nearly 56,000 students last year.

Even so, hardships remain.

Rebecca Van Dyne, 18, of Florence is determined to go to college, even though she has been forced to put it off for a year to save money for tuition.

"I'm already working two jobs, and I'm still not cutting it," says Van Dyne, who graduated from Scott High School this spring and plans to put herself through school. "I plan on applying for as many scholarships as I can, but mostly I am going to work for my own money - because that is the way I've been raised."

Hannah Nawaz, 18, of Wyoming, will attend Miami next year to study physical therapy. Her annual $25,000 bill for tuition, room and board is discounted by $9,750 because she's a state resident. She also qualified for a scholarship that will pay $5,000 a year, meaning Miami will cost her about $10,000 a year.

By her sophomore year, Hannah's family will have three children in college, so she'll probably have to take out loans. That doesn't worry her. "If I do end up becoming a physical therapist, I'll pretty much be able to pay it off in a year," she says.

Hannah's mother, Amy Erb, knows that putting three children through college will be tight but says $10,000 a year isn't too much, considering the payback.

"It's a great value," she says. "Whatever it would take, I would do it. I know they have to have it."

Staff writer Cindy Kranz contributed. E-mail johnb@enquirer.com and jeckberg@enquirer.com