Dear Future President of the United States:

In your role as President of the United States, you will soon have some tough decisions to make for America. I hope that some of these decisions will focus on the cost of college tuition. I am currently an eighth grader at Harper Park Middle School, in Leesburg, VA. Leesburg is an historic town that is not too far from Washington, D.C..  Many of our schools are ranked among the finest in the nation and I’m proud to be a student here!

I will be in high school next year and will start college in 2021. My parents have been saving for my college tuition since I was very young, and they contribute to my college savings account monthly. At dinner we often talk about how important it is to go to college and how people with college educations often have better paying jobs with a college degree. My parents are encouraging me to go away to college, which will cost more money, so that I can also learn more independence, gain responsibility, and meet more people from many different backgrounds. After I graduate college my twin brothers will also both be going off to college. This means my family will have college costs for eight years in a row!

I know that college is very expensive.  The average cost for a Virginia public college or University is about $24,000 for a year, right now. Some college books even cost $400 per book! Five years from now my savings account will only cover one semester and my family will need to get student loans. I know that I will be responsible for paying for some of these loans. This means that after I graduate and get a job I will then automatically have debt that I will have to start paying. The excitement of this step in my life is offset knowing that I will be paying off this debt over the course of many years.

I would like to ask that you work with colleges and universities and have them stop raising college rates so high. There should be a limit on what they can charge. I also hope you can work with the administration to encourage the use of online books so that students aren’t having to pay so much for books and supplies. I also recommend that you make the student loans interest free to help families with this cost. Eighty five percent of the students at my future high school will go off to college. I hope you will work to make this more affordable so that the 85% is closer to 100%. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

Lydia B.