As tuition costs continue to rise, more and more college students will face the sticker shock of acquiring a secondary education. Still struggling with flat economies, huge budget deficits, and rising college enrollments, many states have significantly increased the cost of attendance (Arnone). This leads to greater pressure on the family's financial situation and less economic spending by new graduates due to constant payments on student loans acquired while continuing their studies. With the prospect of family income matching high college costs looming well beyond the horizon, we must ask why tuition costs are steadily rising and what can be done to offset or slow its dramatic rise. The main reason for the increase in tuition costs is due to reduced state funding. Between 1984 and 2003 state funding fell from 62% to 38% of total spending (Micceri). This meant that what universities previously received to cover the costs of teaching the world's youth was drastically reduced. Receiving severely reduced funding, universities had to find a way to cover overhead costs, so they turned to the quickest and easiest way to raise more revenue — raising student tuition. A college will always have students who will pay for their education and for this reason, when government subsidies were cut, students had to cover the monetary reduction they suffered. Between 2000-01 and 2010-11, prices for college tuition, room and board at public institutions increased 42 percent, a faster rate than in the previous two decades (US, average). It is easily seen that colleges co...... half of the document ......7a-4862-a839-1b0508cac676%40sessionmgr110&hid=127&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=eric&AN=ED510180.Nathan, Rebekah . My first year: what a professor learned by becoming a student. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. Print.Quirke, Linda and Scott Davies. “The New Entrepreneurship in Higher Education: The Impact of Tuition Increases at an Ontario University.” The Canadian Journal of Higher Education XXXII.No. 3 (2002): 85-110. Print. U.S. Department of Education. “College and University Tuition Costs.” Institute of Education Sciences. National Center for Education Statistics, nd Web. April 8, 2014. Walden, Mike. "CALS News Center."CALS News Center RSS.Np, January 29, 2013. Web. April 9. 2014. .