Dear Future President,

Being a junior in highschool is pretty tough. I have my normal classes that are getting more difficult; two Advanced Placement courses that average from 3 to 4 hours of homework each night in each class; I have the PSAT, SAT, and ACT(optional, but many take) to prepare for; I must start looking at colleges to create a plan after high school; and I need to begin applying for scholarships.

As you can imagine, it’s very stressful. Attempting to balance a schedule that provides you the most advantage in college without overwhelming yourself is next to impossible. Once you pick your poison of courses, you need to maintain a grade that gives you the grade point average that is acceptable to your college--generally a 3.0 and up depending on field. While you drown is homework and struggle to accept that your pride of all A’s is ruined, you need to get actively involved in extracurricular activities and community service in order to get attention from colleges, taking out more chunks of your already diminishing free time. To be honest, most of us are just trying to survive high school at this point. Trying to stay on top of a wave of stress and struggle, and trying to console ourselves with the hope of a good college.

The brute reality is that most kids are lucky to get into college. College used to be about your education and helping to advance you in the future, but now it seems to be about how much money you have in your pockets. The rich get in no problem because they have no worries about throwing thousands of dollars into college, while the less fortunate struggle. The families with less money start saving for college as soon as they have their first child, if not before yet they still have $30,000 and up in debt to pay off for college. You can only cut so much from your life before the looming payment is too much. And so they try their hardest and pray to God that they’ll get a good scholarship in general and a decent one from a school of choice to lessen the financial blow that will last around 10 or more years. This is assuming they attend a public in-state college, and get a job earning above $50,000 a year. For those with higher debt or lower pay, the blow can last much longer. Scholarships are generally hard to come by and with the cost of college increasing every year, the future is looking pretty bleak.

You can change that. You can lessen the financial instability facing our nation’s children. You can usher in a new age of higher education. You can raise the new age of advanced society. But only if you will invest in the future of America by lowering or ridding America of college costs.