Dear Madam or Mr. President,

      This topic is important to me because it is one thing that will have a huge impact on my life, and many others. I am about to go into a world where I will have to contend with this issue, and while it may not be something that limits me, many other people will be.

      Many people across the USA who are in low-income families are disadvantaged, not necessarily because of the tuition, which can be paid by scholarships, but the “net cost” or cost to attend the college. This can sometimes exceed a family's yearly income (boston globe). This requires them to take out loans that will likely follow if the graduate, and if they didn’t they are almost impossible to pay. The high cost of attending may scare away, or make it impossible for low-income families. These days most medium-high income jobs won't accept someone without a college degree, meaning people with little money are trapped in a cycle, unable to move up the economic ladder.

      All my life I have heard about the “American Dream”, the idea that in the US you can work hard and you, or at least your children will be able to move up the economic ladder, and either make yourself more wealthy, or bring yourself out of poverty. But it seems that the limits and restrictions of today’s college’s and are doing away with that tradition, something we should be trying to keep alive. How can we claim to be a place where people must simply work hard to achieve their goals, if our institutions require that you have money, to make money. That doesn’t seem very dreamy to me.