Aaliyah Maryland

College Affordability

I am informing the president that the majority of students want to go to college. But the price for college if very high leaving them to question whether going to college is worth it.

Mr./Mrs. President, millions of people have a dream to go to college. However, the price of college push away thousands of those people. The prices of college are rising thousands more per year for public and private making it harder for those people that intend to go to college. Those people could be anyone; they could be a parent, a student. Those people would be in debt decades.

My sister is going away to college next school a year. I'm going to be in that same spot two years from now so I wanted to help her find out what the price range would be. So I estimated the amount for the 2016-2017 school year college students from the article “Tuition and Fees and Room and Board over Time, 1975-76 to 2015-16, Selected Years” will have to pay an average of $50,000 a year for a private college and $24,000 for a public college. The prices will range from $80,000 to $240,000 over the course of the 4 years of college. When I go to college the price range will be even higher and that is going to cause students like me that don't have money saved for college to go into a deep debt. We will eventually have to choose between getting a job we love and getting a job that pays more to pay the debt.

I started to wonder why colleges were so expensive and got somewhat of an answer. In the article “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much” in 2015 by The New York Times, Sandy Baum said “So it’s not that colleges are spending more money to educate students. It’s that they have to get that money from someplace to replace their lost state funding - and that's from tuition and fees from students and families. Also in this same article by The New York times states “while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher”. Mr./Mrs. President, if the education department has 10 times more money why can’t some of that money go to college tuitions?

With these prices, our generations will be in debt for years. An article from The Huffington Post in 2013, "Most College Students Work Part-Time Jobs, But Few Pay Their Way Through School: Poll", states that "4 out of 5 students are working part-time jobs while studying for their degrees, averaging 19 hours a week, according to a survey, but just 18% pay their way through school." I find that absolutely terrible and frightening because that was 3 years. Imagine what it's going to be now with the rise prices. Furthermore a website named Student Loan Hero stated that $1.26 trillion dollars are owed in student loan debt in 2016. That is coming from 43.3 million college alumni's. Already there is a trillion dollars owned how are the people of society going to pay for that? They will have to pick up those part-time jobs, work extra shifts, and in some cases give up their most valued possessions to pay for loan payments along with other bills that need to get payed. A lot of people cant juggle all those things cause them to quit school and get a low paying job as to not to get into a pile of deep debt.

So Mr./Mrs. President are you going to let the future generations of college students be in debt for years? Or are you going to take action now and make college more affordable for students to be well educated to run this country right? It's up to you, don't let our country go down as result of the lack of education due to high college prices. Please make an effort to let college affordability better for the next generations that are our future. 

Patapsco High School & Center for the Arts

Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts

A comprehensive high school, with an arts magnet program, serving 1500 students in Dundalk, Baltimore County, MD.

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