Friday, October 30, 2009

Cost of College on the Rise

Article: http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/19/pf/college_costs/index.htm

In the article “College: More expensive than ever”, CNNMoney.com writer Hibah Yousuf reports that the costs of attending and graduating from college are higher than they have ever been in the past, causing a college degree to be unattainable for many students in America.  The number of students seeking higher degrees of education is steadily rising for reasons from increased number of high school graduates to a decrease in hiring and job market opportunities.  Yousuf informs us that universities are capitalizing on this trend.  There is less grant money available because more students are seeking it and fewer contributions are being made to the pot of loan money.  This, in turn, produces a great need for more borrowing, in the form of loans.  If a student is unable to receive a loan, for one reason or another, the college degree is going to be out of reach for them.

            I am a strong, strong believer that much more of the government’s budget needs to be allocated to education.  I hear in the news every once in a while about the government giving millions and millions of dollars to help fund as research project on weapons for war, or a billion dollars is given to stimulate the economy in a country on the other side of the world.  But, to me, the education of individuals in our country is far more important and will be far more beneficial to America than many of these other fund allocations they come up with.  The government needs to realize the education of our citizens will improve our society by increasing efficiency, productivity, and the overall capacity to excel.  With higher education institutions becoming increasingly expensive in conjunction with less money in the form of grants and loans, people will simply be unable to attend these institutions and will not gain a higher education.  This will directly effect the lower to middle economic class, more so than the upper, starting an entirely separate problem of upholding the socioeconomic divide of Americans.  This vicious cycle will never come to an end unless the government decides to pump more money into the educational system in America, allowing schools to feel no need to up the prices for student tuition.  If schools were given more money, they would be able to decrease the price for a student to attend and would then be much more willing and able to provide for students who cannot financially afford any type of upper level schooling without assistance.

It is crazy for the government to not increase the spending budget for educational institutions.  The more educated we are as a country, the more we will be able to excel in the world in a very positive way.  The more resources we have for students who cannot afford education, the smaller the racial, social, and economic minority gap will become.  Education is such an important aspect in life and students shouldn’t be worried about financial boundaries to stand in the way of expanding their minds!

*Related Articles*
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568705,00.html
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/college-costs-up/
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html

*Video*

3 comments:

  1. I completely agree with the author of this piece. I have found myself many times questioning why our country contributes billions of dollars to developing many other things except education. While I understand the need to advance our weaponry and invest into our wars, I consider education to be of equal importance. People question the amount of high school graduates and the dropout percentage but maybe this number has increased because of the constant increase of college tuition. Perhaps some of the students who dropout want to go to college but simply cannot afford to and so they feel unmotivated to finish high school. Sometimes we blame the students themselves for dropping out or the school but we need to realize that perhaps that if the students were given more financial help to be able to go to college and be successful, perhaps more students would finish high school and continue on to college.
    We are seeing an increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor and I think this is partially to blame. While the tuition keeps increasing, it makes it impossible for poor students to better themselves out of their economic status and it continues to give power to the wealthy students. If something is not done to help lower tuition cots and or increase financial aid for students, the economic gap will continue to increase.

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  2. Our country's failure to properly allocate financial resources and put the plug on inflating tuition prices is certainly a major part of the reason why the drop out rates among American students are currently on the rise. What I find interesting is that the focus it is not just on high school students anymore. In the video, it was shocking when Peter Schiff pointed out how his father paid his way through UConn using the money he earned from his summer waiter job. That scenario could never play out in this day and age, where the "College Dropout Boom", a completely separate phenomena, plays an equally vicious role as the high school drop out boom. I was alarmed to learn that barely 60% of students at competitive American universities go on to actually graduate in four years. But lower income students who receive a solid high school education and are capable of graduating from college are unable to do so because they simply run out of money and the government has run out of loans. Therefore, these college students drop out, planning only to delay their graduation. But after a while, it is very common for these delays to become extended and the earning of a degree never comes to fruition.
    It is sometimes appalling to see how the government chooses to allocate its resources. With all the money that goes into foreign aid and military spending, one would think that just a fraction of those funds could make college tuition more reasonable for American students. With more funds being pumped into the education pot, prices will fall, expenses will equalize and the government will have much more money to contribute in loans for students who cannot fully afford college right away. More students earning higher degrees is always a benefit in a society that seemingly values education very much. It will be interesting to see how the college tuition nightmare unfolds for the American college student body in the coming years.

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  3. It seems very fitting that I am simultaneously writing a paper on the Cuban Revolution when I read this post because the explicit revolutionary themes of elitism, and the power of literacy and learning illuminate the shortcomings of America's educational system. A fundamental difference between Revolutionary Cuba and America emerges as a power struggle. Cuba exemplifies not only the rotation of power (and specifically political power) through the numerous rebel movements since 1895, it also illustrates the ideological importance of a compassionate and moral majority. The rhetoric of the infamous Cuban Revolution emphasizes social and community progress through societal cooperation, rather than competition.


    Although in practice these systems have been exploited by political corruption, they introduced the difference between "material" and "moral" definitions of progress. Cuba valued a sense of "moral progress". Socialism and Communism sought to take away power from the elite and give it to the disenfranchised victims of their rule--the working masses. In a sense, Cuba from 1959-1990 (1990 marking the collapse of the Soviet Union) emphasized the importance of every citizen working together for national progress: "nationalismo". The belief was that the revolutionary society failed altogether when it failed an individual. In this way, education was viewed in Cuba as a revolving door for widespread societal development--they were only as strong as their weakest citizen. This revolving door is the heart of the practice in "moral progression".

    America on the other hand, values visible, tangible "material" success. It values diplomas that can be hung and titles that can be read. The very essence of the word "material" suggest that success can be bought; it is a possession. This is the very root of unearned privilege in America today. Rather than education being equally accessible by all students, something like an Ivy League education is only a viable option for some one who can afford the tuition of these schools. In this way, education is a series of closed doors--the more people who can be deterred from reaching the highest levels of education make those who do attain this level of education that much more individually successful and powerful.

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