Inflation Catches Up With WWC: Next Years Rise in Tuition
Tyson Lewis | April 20, 2023
Warren Wilson College (WWC) Interim President Bill Christy announced a return to an annual tuition increase in the 2023-24 year. Christy expressed that a major factor in the decision to do so is inflation — a wave which is affecting the whole country.
During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic’s highest point WWC did not raise its tuition prices. At its peak, inflation had reached 9.1 percent in the month of June 2022. The bottom line is that during the time where the prices were going up drastically WWC stayed the same.
This is not the case for many institutions, but especially not the case for many corporations during the pandemic. For them it was an opportunity for skyrocketing profits and they overwhelmingly indulged. The effects of which have been labeled “greedflation.”
The term itself is in response to the immense growth of wealth amongst what are hard times for most people.
Shareholders of large corporations profited more during the pandemic raking in $1.5 trillion whereas the mass of over seven million workers for these same companies gained only $7 billion.
22 of America's largest corporations including companiesWalmart or Disney demonstrated this trend over the course of the pandemic. The gains of the company shareholders all shot up to being 57 times the gains of wage workers in 2020 and 2021.
Regardless of even those gains, the workers wages are not holding up next to the inflation. Inflation is far outpacing the stagnant wages of this mass of more than seven million workers. Only three of the 22 corporations on that list pay an average wage at or above the Brookings living wage of eighteen dollars per hour.
And when compared to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, none of the 22 corporations pay a living wage of $25an hour.
The WWC tuition increase is similarly tied to inflation caused by America’s biggest corporations. Student’s bill next year will be a reflection of global trends that Warren Wilson is not exempt from.