Apr 15, 2017 10:27 PM EDT By Audri Taylors, UniversityHerald Reporter

Attending college these days to earn a degree is never easy, considering the constant increase in college costs. While the cost of tuition and other expenses in college vary widely depending on the school that a student wishes to attend, it still does not change the fact that more than half of these students take on loans just to be able to be able to pursue higher education.

According to Business Insider, the cost of college back in the 1980 including the tuition, room and board was only $9,438, but these figures have climbed up to as much as $23,872.

Aside from the expensive cost of post-secondary education, another reason why students who graduate from college burdened with student debt is because they pay more for college than they are supposed to according to a new report; they pay beyond the recommended benchmark for affordability, Inside Higher Ed reported.

These findings came from the study of the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute and New America. The researchers studied a federal data set from 2012 which includes the expenses that typical college students would spend for while in college, including the tuition rates, fees, board, room and others. And then, they have compared the data to an affordability measure called the Rule of 10, which was created in 2015, by Lumina Foundation.

What they have found was that students and families should not be spending more than the amount of money they saved after setting aside 10 percent if their income for 10 years, combined with the earnings of a college student who work for 10 hours per week while enrolled in college. The results have shown that 68 percent of the overall number of graduates overpaid as they spent twice the recommended amount.

The report also said that even with the student earnings and loans are combined, they were not enough to cover the net cost of the enrollment. This is why parents and their children find other means to finance the cost of college education.

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