Want a good laugh? Go up to any student at Minnesota State University right now — go ahead, walk right up to them — and ask them how much they think tuition has gone up during the past few years.

Chances are the response will look and sound a lot like the one Kari Kettner, a junior mass communications major from Nicollet, yielded.

“Gosh ... I don’t ... Maybe 10 percent?” she said.

Try 95 percent since 1999.

“Oh my gosh!” she said. Truly. “For real? I definitely wouldn’t have thought that.”

Kettner and her response — her guess, her indignation — in many ways say a lot about the framing of the debate surrounding tuition. In the vast majority of cases, college tuition is a problem for people with little knowledge of how the system works, and little clout with which to change it.

They come to college with big dreams and they want to pursue them, and in many cases it just seems so much easier to accept the dollar figure on the bottom line of that tuition bill. Accept it and move on with the real business of higher education, and a few years down the road, when the big paychecks start coming in from the “real job,” the student loan repayment booklet can just go on top of the bills pile.

The problem is that as tuition goes up and financial aid remains stagnant, the amount of borrowing needed to finance a college education goes up dramatically, and many more graduates leave campus on graduation day with a diploma in one hand, and into unimaginable debt.

Worse, many whose only option is to take out high-interest loans are simply choosing to not attend college. Others resort to credit cards.

Lately, however, the political climate has produced a few areas for optimism. The two leading candidates for governor, incumbent Tim Pawlenty and Democratic challenger Mike Hatch, have presented plans that can ease the burden for some students. And students during the past few years have, in big numbers, voiced opposition during lobbying trips to the Capitol.

Numbers don’t lie

During the 1999-2000 academic year, tuition and fees at MSU totaled $2,996. This year, it is $5,840, an increase of nearly 95 percent.

Across the river at South Central College, tuition is a bit cheaper, but the increases have been similar. In 1999-2000, tuition and fees — based on an average full-time credit load of 15 — was $2,287.50. This year, an 84 percent increase later, tuition and fees for 15 credits runs $4,222.50.

This kind of inflation hasn’t gone unnoticed. College students may be transient in nature and normally don’t remain college students for more than four or five years, that doesn’t mean tuition hikes don’t hurt.

A few years when those hikes were especially harsh — one year saw MSU’s tuition jump 14 percent — students showed up in force to protest.