Money.
It’s something nearly every college student struggles with. Whether it is a private university or a state funded college, tuition can be a heavy burden to bear. The average annual tuition of a four year college is about $35,000.
This may not be much for a student whose parents both have well-paying jobs, but what about the others who only have one working parent, or who don’t even have the funds to pay for college? The difficulties of paying for college have been a topic of debate during presidential elections for years, yet there has been seemingly little progress in the area of financial aid for students. It’s a hefty issue, but it’s clear that a cheaper, if not completelyfree, education would benefit society as a whole. So many people get stuck in unproductive, unfulfilling jobs just so that they can pay bills. Paying off a loan for tuition is a burden that stays with you for many years. There are countless situations of parents still paying off their own college tuition while trying to put their children through college as well. It seems unfair and darkly ironic that students must work hard in school in order to get a hopefully excellent job just so they can pay back the college that was supposed to help them get ahead in life. Statistically, the cost of a college education will only increase over the next few years, meaning that it will be even more difficult for us to put our children through college. The cost of getting a higher education has become so overbearing that parents strategically plan how many years apart they choose to have children and how many
children they want to have. Additional children born less than four years apart could mean several loans to pay off all at once. Some argue that providing a free education to everyone would put so many people out of jobs and decrease so much spending that the market would crash again. However, it’s been tried and proven in other countries like France that a free, or very low-cost education is a huge benefit to society. There would be more productive citizens if they didn’t have to worry about constantly paying off loans that seem to last a lifetime. They could focus on creating jobs or working on new technologies. Ironically, the debt incurred by a college education holds people back rather than helps them to progress further in life, which is what a tertiary education is supposed to do. Hopefully, in the near future, our government finds a way to decrease college costs; it is an education, more than anything, that will move this country and its citizens forward.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Moore chapter.