Dear Future President,

Imagine walking into a college dorm and seeing no food in the cabinets, pantry, or even on the counter. This is how students are living right now. Food is a necessity of life and students can’t even afford to buy it. This is because they have to pay for the tuition, housing, books, classes and so much more. This situation that college students are in could have been avoided. It cannot be avoided though because according to ThinkProgress.org, “College prices have increased by 27% over the past five years.” The college prices are too high and they need to be lowered.

The problem with the colleges now is that they are having you pay so much money,  it is ridiculous! For example Studentloan.com states, “At private schools the tuition is $32,405, at public universities the tuition is $9,410, and out of state residents attending public universities tuition is $23,893.” That is just for the tuition! Now you can see that just from this data that if the prices go higher and even stay at this amount, students will be in debt from college when they are older. Studentloanhero.com says, “Americans owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student loan debt.” This is crazy, and the debt should not be this high. If the college prices continue to rise, Americans will be in even more debt. If we want this generation and even the next generation to be able to afford to go to college then we need to lower the prices for college.

This problem may sound hard to solve, but there is an easy solution which is to have the colleges not make the students pay for their meal plans when a lot of them don’t even use them. According to Collegedata.com, “Some of the prices for the meal plans can range from $9,804 to $11,188.” At the beginning of a semester of college there should be a question asked if they are going to be using the meal plan for that semester. If they say, "No I will not be using the meal plan," then you will not have to pay all of that extra money. If they say, "Yes I will be using the meal plan," then you will pay all of that money. The students should have a choice of what they want to do. I know personally that this will help solve the problem because my sister is in college and she doesn’t want or need to have a meal plan. If she didn’t have to pay for her meal plan, then her cost for college would go down by so much.

Now some people may say that the students can just commute. Commuting is not any better than 'living on college. The average cost for the students commuting is 36% higher than for the students living on campus according to files.eric.ed.gov. Transportation is a big deal, because gas money is a lot now these days. I would hope that we would want the students to experience the college life, and just experience life on their own. However, if the students were to commute they would still be living with their parents. The parents will have to be paying more money, because the student is living there. Many students are commuting to school though because the prices are ridiculous to eat the food on campus, pay for the rent in the dorm, and more. This is just another example showing how high the college prices really are.

Future president, you and our whole nation can work together to lower the prices of college if we just give it a try. I would love to go to college and continue my education. However if the prices of college keep rising, I don’t think I will be able to afford go to college. We need to take a stand and help so many people get into college. Put this plan into action and the education will be brighter.

Sincerely,

Natalie C.