In case you’ve been living in a Y2K bunker for the past eight years, here’s a news flash: College is getting expensive, and its price is increasing every day.

According to CNN.com, “The cost of attending college has risen nearly three times the rate of the cost of living.”

The results stemmed from a report released by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which also announced that 49 out of 50 states failed on college affordability. The outlier to the data was California, which received a C.

Now, I understand the economy is currently in a downturn and lots of services and items are now more expensive to provide to students, but why does college have to be so ridiculously overpriced?

The expense deters a margin of people from attending college because they just cannot find a way to make ends meet.

This produces a ripple effect because when tuition is jacked up, it ends up hurting us nationally.

Currently only 34 percent of young adults in America are in college, according to CNN.com, making the U.S. fall behind six other countries.

This is pitiful. But what’s even worse is that CNN.com says the U.S. ranks tenth internationally for its percentage of citizens with associate degrees or higher with an embarrassing 39 percent.

However, despite the nationwide failure, I have to commend certain states, like South Carolina for example, for trying to help out its constituents.

Many people I know have received hefty scholarships from the LIFE Scholarship, which draws money from lottery funds.

With much disappointment, I cannot say the same for my home state of Ohio. Many Ohio universities have terrible programs, though lottery money is supposedly going toward scholarships.

Does it make sense that I can go to USC for a good $4,000 less per year than a couple of the Ohio schools where I applied?

It doesn’t really add up. Students should be able to stay in state for school for a moderate amount of money.

No matter how you slice it, college administrators on every campus need to make sure that tuition money is spent as effectively as possible.

Students need to start holding their administrators accountable for how their education money is being spent (or, in some cases, misused). If students don’t do this, who will?

Now is not the time to waste money.

With the state of the stock market, funds are being depleted and parents have to draw money from alternative sources, such as retirement funds, to help fund their children’s educations.

This shouldn’t have to happen. Education should be a basic right for all who seek it, and its cost shouldn’t affect the future of students and parents so dramatically.