Dear Next President,

For as long as I could remember, my parents emphasized to me the importance of education. Be it reading to me or hearing my long elaborate stories, my parents would set aside time in their often long days to encourage me to learn and think in a progressive manner. Now that I am at the threshold from adolescence to adulthood, the biggest concern for both me and my family is higher education, most specifically, getting me into college, and finding a way to pay for it.

I have recently been confronted with the sobering reality that in an effort to pay for my higher education, I, and those like me, will likely have to take out high interest loans, which could in all likelihood could set me back years in my inevitable search for independence in a state in which the cost of living is rapidly increasing.

Though my father is currently out of work, and my mother is forced to work long hours to support our family, they have never lost hope that with a degree, I can live an easier and less tiresome life.

My personal hope is to become a teacher and eventually an administrator, and make enough money so that I can live a life akin to what my parents have hoped for me for all these years.

Yet, in order to achieve this dream, I must enter into a college system which, from my observation, seems to place profit margins over students. Though I will likely be afforded access to financial aid to some extent, there are still those in this nation who hold to dreams which are being blocked by the exceedingly high expenses that now come with college.

Dreams of living content lives, dreams of living successfully or perhaps even modestly, and most of all, dreams of becoming a part of a larger community. However, no matter how bold these dreams, a major blockade in this road to achievement is college affordability.

I would ask of you simply this, make college more affordable for those in this nation who aim to make something of themselves.

In our nation’s Declaration of Independence, our forefathers so boldly stated that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Yet If we do not allow all individuals access to the very institutions which could make these words ring most truthfully, are we not thus depriving them of their own unalienable rights to pursue happiness?

Though in our modern era, bipartisan education reform is perhaps easier said than done; I, and millions of other young dreamers in this nation look to you, Our Next President, for relief, guidance, and above all, hope. Driven by an undying faith in a truly American principle: If you work, you can achieve anything.

Regardless of your party or policies, I truly do hope that you can do but one this thing to help make the dreams of millions Americans into realities.

Thank you.