Dear Future President,

Currently, I am only a freshman in high school. When I graduate high school and get my diploma, I plan to go to college and major in film to become a director with a minor in physics. Although I want to this the only thing that would be stopping all of my dreams would be stopped with the cost of college tuition. The tuition for college in America has risen substantially, while the income pay has not risen enough to meet the demand of college. This result means that students have to rely on loans and will soon start to swim in debt even when they graduate college.

According to ProCon.org in 1971 the median annual income for an American was 6,903 USD, when adjusted for inflation that would be 34,989 USD today. While college in 1971 for four years was 1,832 USD and adjusted for inflation would be 10,515 USD. When the pay of Americans were exponentially higher than college tuition, one person could work at a fast food restaurant and still be able to pay for college with a marginal amount of money left over. But as time went on the cost of a regular four year term of college went up by 259 percent, and now college tuitions cost 29,557 USD when adjusted for inflation. That is 26% of the average American income as of 2012, from it being 6.2% in 1971.

Knowing this students are forced to rely on loans from banks. It is commonly believed that it is very simple to just take out a loan and pay it off later. This isn’t as common as it seems though there are major side effects to a student loan. Studies from CNBC show that a loan of as little as 30,000 USD can take as much as 325,000 USD from a 401k balance when that student retires. It is shown that 69% of college students in 2014 took out a student loan debt to get by. Phyllis Korkkri has stated in his article “For one thing, it appears that people with student loans are less likely to start businesses of their own. A new study has found that areas with higher relative growth in student debt show lower growth in the formation of small businesses (in this case, firms with one to four employees).” This quote explains that in areas with a higher amount of student debt, students cannot pursue their goals of owning a business whether it be a large or small business. With this information it can be said that just taking a student loan cannot always be the way to go to pay for college to just get by.

I am not the only concerned student in this matter, as I am sure you have received an abundant amount of letters from other concerned students. Such as M.A. from Louisiana has stated “College is very important to the lives of many people in today’s world.” Which is correct because as the world moves on and advances, people are becoming increasingly dependent on college as many jobs and businesses do not hire someone if they do not have a college degree.

Overall college has very important benefits in all parts of the economic and the students life. But college cannot reach its full potential to students, because of the very troubling and back-breaking cost and debt. If actions were to be taken that could lower the cost of college, or possibly increase the median income then more people could enjoy the benefits of college without the fear of drowning in debt. More people going to college will also better the economy by having more students pursuing careers that they can achieve, and with those careers one of these students could be the very next Bill Gates.

Sincerely,

J.A.