11/1/16

Future President

1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Washington D.C., 20500

Dear Future President, my name is Tanner and I would like to bring up a few points about college tuition and the two perspectives of it. I am concerned with this topic because in the next coming years I will be graduating from high school and plan to attended a college. I will explain the two sides of the topic and supporting facts for each side, then I will give you my opinion and explain why I feel this why about the topic.

I'll go over why college costs should be changed. The major problem is that college has gotten so expensive. In an article written by John W. Schoen of CNBC, he says that “It costs $45,278 to attend Harvard University annually. That's more than 17 times the cost the class of 1971-1972 had to pay for their time of attending Harvard. Though this not only applies to harvard students but to almost every school. Some say the reason for this is the inflation rate, though a credible professor says otherwise by saying this. "If you look at the long-term trend, college tuition has been rising almost six percent above the rate of inflation," said Ray Franke, a professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Inflation has had to do with rising college costs but when the cost are not equal to the inflation rate by 6% that mean we are paying 6% more and that is not fair.

Now I'll go over why college costs should not be changed. We are never going to get rid of the cost of college it's just simply impossible. All we can do is shift the costs from our students to our taxpayers. I would not consider this because taxpayers already pay taxes for public schooling and many other things and this would cause a large increase in taxes. In the article “The Problem with Free college is That Free College Isn't Free” written by Andrew P. Kelly he states that “A national push for tuition-free college would strain public budgets even further, leading to shortages rather than increased access. And because middle and upper-income students will gobble up many of the free public slots, rationing will hurt those who need access the most”. He is right, essentially we'd be causing the new problem of not having enough room for everyone in our college schooling system.

What is my point of view? Well I think college tuition costs should be lowered, instead of being free or costing as much as it is. My reasoning behind this decision is free college might sound amazing on the surface but it would make our taxpayers pay more in addition to what many consider already high taxes. But I also don't think it's a good idea to keep the system this way. It costs way to much and student loans are killing our citizens with outrageous loan payments because of the high prices. Do I know what it would take to lower the prices? No. Though my fellow students and I can agree college costs are too high and change is needed.

So Mr/Mrs.Future President I hope that I have brought to your attention that I believe we should lower the cost of college in our country. For reasons; Costs being more that 6% higher than the inflation rate suggests it should be, and because it isn't realistic for us to get rid of the entire cost because someone else will end up having to pay for it.