Future President

The White House

Washington D.C

Dear Future President,

College tuition rises every year. Many graduates of high school cannot attend college because it costs too much. I am asking from the bottom of my heart if you could lower the cost of higher education to allow more people to attend college. As Mariah Young wrote, “College debts prevents young workers from saving for retirement, oftentimes leading them to come up short on their savings later in life” (2015). Not only does debt hurt them in their younger years, but it can also affect them later on in life such as planning for retirement.

I plan on attending Alabama A&M University with a degree in Early Childhood Education. To attend this college it would cost me $17,054, not including the cost of living expenses and books, which is a price my family and I cannot afford. This would cause me to turn to financial aid and go into student debt.

Getting a higher education comes with many risks. “The most obvious risk is that you won’t finish the degree program over which you are taking the loan, and you then end up leaving the school without anything to show for except some uncomfortably large debts,” according to a Best Schools article (2016). Getting a higher education is supposed to be helpful in earning money, but student debt prevents many graduates from being as financially stable as they would be if they did not have student debts.

Although I see many programs attempting to improve the problems with student loans, I still feel as if they are not helpful enough. Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed an act that would lower the interest rate on existing student loans from 7% to 3.86%. "This act would be financed by levying a mandatory income tax of 30% on everyone who earns between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 per year, “ according to Student loan Poll Results (2016). This could help take the burden off of families like mine.

Debt hinders graduates, and the numbers of graduates with student loan debts are increasing. “Kantowitz’s study shows that an increasing fraction of America’s college graduates are leaving school with what he labels “excessive student loan debt,“ according to a U.S. News and World Report. If the student loan debts continue to increase, many students may not want to attend higher education because of the prices.

Sincerely,

Briana S.