Dear President,

One of the biggest issues in America is college tuition costs. It’s affecting everyone and all of their life plans. A source from Online Universities says that a lot of people are waiting to get married since weddings are so expensive, and whatever money most college students have, it’s going towards paying off their debt. This shows that students are putting the large life milestones in the back of their minds until they’re able to pay off the debt. Although this is smart, it isn’t something they should have to sacrifice. The same website says, “Growing number of grads move back in with their parents after graduating.” Doing this adequately shows that even though these people are adults, they’re being forced to still live at home. If all of the money that they’re making from their job goes to paying off student debt, they can’t support themselves and have to move in with family, or friends again, until they can sustain a life on their own. The craziest statistic to me is that students are delaying medical and dental health just to put more money towards their loans. I didn’t believe this one until someone who is very close to me said he didn’t want to go to the doctors to get medicine because he wouldn’t be able to afford it.

After making all these points, let’s talk about the actual price of college. Tuition at a private university is now roughly three times as expensive as it was in 1974, costing an average of $31,000 a year; public tuition, at $9,000, has risen by nearly four times. Taking into account that the average household income is about 51,000 dollars, that’s an insane amount to expect people to pay. Most kids do get help from their parents for college, but the ones that don’t, are probably just doing standard work. They probably aren’t making anywhere close to 51,000 a year so to expect them to be able to afford that loan all by themselves is still a lot to ask. Regardless of the next president, we need someone who will take the cost of education as a serious issue. Candidate Donald Trump has said he will cut the Department Of Education's funding “way, way, way down”. That worries me because if you’re cutting their funding down, that’s increasing college prices more than what they already are for us. Right now, it seems like you can’t get a good, stable career without going to college. Young adults have already said they would rather not go to college, and get experience just from doing the job than to have to pay for it. Other young adults are making it very clear they can’t afford it simply because they don’t graduate. Not only do you have to pay for the loan you’ve taken out, but you don’t have a degree to show for it.

Interestingly enough, college tuition has nothing to do with how much money the school has to have to deliver their education. Colleges are charging young adults more than what they need because they know they can get away with it. College prices are going up so fast there's no way to regulate it to a certain amount of inflation. Something needs to be done President, what are you going to do to stop this?

Sincerely,

Abigail C.

Works Cited

"15 Surprising Side Effects of Rising College Costs." OnlineUniversitiescom. N.p., 13 Oct. 2016. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.

Davidson, Adam. "Is College Tuition Really Too High?" Nytimes.com. N.p., 6 Sept. 2015. Web. 25 Oct. 2016.

Snyder, Dr. Bonnie. "Why Does College Cost Too Much? Ask Karl Marx." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 May 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.