Tyler J. Washington

College tuition is to high

Hello my name is Tyler Johnston I am 14 years old and I am from Seattle Washington, my letter is about how college tuition is too high and too expensive for a lot of families.

Dear Mr. or Ms. President,

The tuition of college is currently up 110% for a 4 year tuition and 59% for a 2 year tuition from 2014 to 2016 (Schoen), which is really bad. Because The New York Times has said that baby boomers used to be able to pay for college from their summer jobs! Now to pay for college it takes more than some adult’s SALARY. That’s way too much money for schooling. We should be able to pay for college with our summer jobs, and we need schooling to get better jobs to make more money so we can be more successful and can live a good life. And make sure our kids (if we have any) have a good life and everyone in our family can have a roof over their heads. I believe that if we lower the prices of college and enable young adults to pay for college with their own summer job earnings it will teach them even more responsibility and real life situations.

It is bad that college tuition is so expensive because we are going to college for our education, and we all need to have equal chances to go. An article from cnbc states that “the widening gap between the cost of higher education and the growth of household income is also putting a damper on the college aspirations of millions of American families”(Schoen). This is important because those people who can’t afford to go to college will not have the same opportunities as people who can afford to go to college.

People who can’t afford to go to college are taking out loans to go and they start drowning in debt. What that meant was “Students and parents borrowed $106.1 billion in education loans in 2014-15...For the class of 2016, that meant graduating with an average of $37,173 in loans” (Lane). We don’t want to owe money to anyone or anything before we’ve even started really living, we need our money to buy or rent a house/apartment and we need to buy clothes, food, and necessities.

Some people say college isn’t too expensive because some schools are so advanced that they give you the education that you are paying for. For example, Harvard and Yale are more expensive than most, but they give you some of the best education, and wow most employers when they see it on your resume. However, most people who have the intelligence and the grades and everything they need to deserve to go there but they don’t get a scholarship and they can’t afford it, they are being held back from what they deserve.

The fact that college tuition is up 110% for four-year tuition is acting like it’s a gas station, the price just keeps going up and up every year, and that’s not okay. I hope when you are president that you will find a way to lower the prices so that more people can go to good colleges and get better jobs and we won’t have so many people working at McDonald’s and not being able to live a successful and happy life because they aren’t able to pay for the things they want and need. It is complete bs that college tuition has more numbers in it than my phone number, I should be able to earn enough money on my own and pay for college, and be able to take care of myself and not have to rely on my parents to pay it all off for me, but yet college tuition keeps going up and up and up and making me have to take out loans or take my parents money and then make my family and I go into debt.