There are three main social structures in our society today. There is the upper class, the rich and affluent, who have endless amount of money in order to be comfortable and survive. We have the middle class, the normal people, who work on the daily in order to keep their family together and have a work under their roof. Finally, we have the lower class, who have a hard time surviving, but the government does not want people living in the states so they help this class the most. They receive financial aid, money aid, food stamps, and health aid. So, for college, usually it is easier for the lower class to go because they receive money aid through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. (FASFA) Also, the upper class, do not have any problem sending their children to college because they have the money to send them without taking loans because they are comfortable. However, the middle class is the sandwich. They are not comfortable in order to pay their child’s tuition price and do not receive money from the government unless they are loans. As a high school student, one can only think about their dream university - the one that would lead to the perfect job and the perfect life. Would it be Duke, UCLA, or even Harvard? From raising their child to applying to colleges to acceptance letters coming in the mail, parents are always thinking about how they are going to pay for their child 's education. The U.S. Government passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 which allows the unfortunate and affluent students to attend school up until high school free of charge. However, as you proceed in your education, it starts to get expensive. A child who attends a prestigious college such as Duke or UCLA has to pay around $40,000... ... middle of paper ... ...e the potential to become great doctors, lawyers, businessmen, or even musicians/artists, but because they do not have the funds available to be properly educated in these fields, they are not able to pursue their dream careers. The biggest consequence that faces the middle class is that they have lost future potential because there isn 't enough money for some of these people to get the education they deserve in order to do great things.. There are still doctors and lawyers out here in the world trying to pay off their debts fifteen years or more after graduating, even though they have their high end job. When sitting at the bank, I overheard a 92 year old man say “I’m loan free now” as he signed his last check over to the bank.This portrays how loans are maleficent. Honestly, the best alternative to a financial aid plan would be to get injured on a college campus.
These days, colleges are seemingly endless money pits. Did you know that in 1970 at a public university, tuition on average was only $2,710? Today, we could only dream of it being so low. Once you start looking at the actual average prices of attending a college or a university, you start to think it’s a joke with how expensive it is. It’s definitely no joke. The annual cost for undergraduate tuition, room and board is estimated to be $12,804 at public institutions and $32,184 at private institutions for the 2010 academic year, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. That means that even a modest education—a bachelor’s degree from a public university or college—will cost at least $50,000. You can find cheaper colleges for example if you attended a community college, but many of those you cannot get more than a two year degree with. There are also colleges with pr...
The idea of freedom and equal opportunity that America was built on has sadly been lost and replaced with a system of quality education only being accessible by the wealthy. In-state college tuition should be free for all students meeting admission requirements, allowing students from the full spectrum of economic backgrounds to have the same opportunity to receive the same education. The incidence of poverty in the U.S. is directly linked to educational level. When a college degree is earned, income levels rise (College Board). The best use of federal government anti-poverty funds is not another welfare or assistance program; it is to make college education affordable for everyone.
Individuals are struggling nowadays to acquire an education higher than a high school diploma. One of the main reasons for this issue could be very well the price it is to attend college. The prices have skyrocketed throughout the years. A lot of the people who attend college have to take out a “student loan,” just so they can get by. I believe one should not need to be in serious debt before they even graduate, all because they want to go out and further their education, and become successful in their life. College is a popular topic for most and Sanford J. Ungar and Charles Murray has a unique way of explaining both their opinions.
As Hacker and Dreifus described in their essay, tuition rates are a major factor when it comes to choosing a good college. “For most Americans, educating their offspring will be the largest financial outlay, after their home mortgage, they’ll ever make.” (p. 179) according to Hacker and Dreifus education costs American families lots of money almost as much as home mortgage, and after all that money people aren’t certain if the investment is worth the price or not.
Mark Kantrowitz indicates in his article, Why the Student Loan Crisis Is Even Worse Than People Think, that “Student loan debt is increasing because government grants and support for postsecondary education have failed to keep pace with increases in college costs”(Why 1). This means that the government no longer covers for college tuition fees. College graduates are 20% more likely to work at a job that is outside of their major by the debt they are in. Kantrowitz also mentions that “students who borrow to attend college, it appears that more than a quarter (27.2%) of them are graduating with excessive debt” (Why 1). In reality, leads to student saying that the financial cost was worthless, ending up with a job that is especially not what they went to school
"Parents with incomes below $40,000 were much more likely to say they couldn 't afford college compared to those with higher incomes. The unsettling aspect of this poll is that in all likelihood, these parents ' perceptions mirror reality," says Tamara Draut, author of "Strapped”. She talks about how most middle class families can 't afford to put their children into college. The highest education they can get is a high school diploma, which we all know in this modern world it cant get you a lucrative job to maintain your whole life. Most American don 't get the chance to develop their full capabilities through higher schooling due to lack of resources like funds to enable them see their full potential. People will say that education is meant for people who can afford to go. And already the government has made schooling from pre-k to high school free for all public school, so making community colleges free will cost the state about 60 billion dollars as said by the white house spokesman Eric Schultz . Education must not be limited to only privilege people,it should be universal for anybody willing to educate themselves to make their life better and help grow Americas economy reducing
One statistic that Owen and Sawhill presented was “Hamilton Project research shows that 23- to 25-year-olds with bachelor’s degrees make $12,000 more than high school graduates but by age 50, the gap has grown to $46,500 (Figure 1). When we look at lifetime earnings—the sum of earnings over a career—the total premium is $570,000 for a bachelor’s degree and $170,000 for an associate’s degree. (Owen, Sawhill pg 641). Owen and Sawhill also mention that “with tuitions rising faster than family incomes, the typical college student is now more dependent than in the past on loans, creating serious risks for the individual student and perhaps for the system as a whole, should widespread defaults occur in the future. Federal student loans now total close to $1 trillion, larger than credit card debt or auto loans and second only to mortgage debt on household balance sheets” (Owen, Sawhill pg 642). Basically, what the authors are saying is college is expensive, but for some career paths, the training and education received in college is necessary to have that job and the benefits outweigh the costs. With a high paying career where a college education is necessary, paying off student loans is no problem. On the other hand, people who go after low paying careers that don’t necessarily need a college degrees,
Today in America, “The average Class of 2016 graduate has $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from last year. $1.28 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt...44.2 million Americans with student loan debt”(U.S. Student Loan Hero, 1). We spend our lives working, learning, and trying to survive. In order to survive, we need to be educated. In order to be educated, we need money. To collect money, we need a good paying job. And in order to have a job, we need to be educated. It’s a large cycle that goes around in circles, and we can’t seem to find a steady way to help provide these things for everyone. While we all strive to make the best of every situation, money has become an issue, creating problems in many lives around the world. “According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2016–2017 school year was $33,480 at private colleges, $9,650 for state residents at public colleges, and $24,930 for out-of-state residents attending public universities” (COLLEGEdata, 1). And it’s not easy to have a positive look on the American dream when our own president in spouting things like “Sadly, the American Dream is dead” (President Donald
For most families with teenagers applying for colleges there is one main question―what will it cost us? According to The College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2013–2014 school year was $30,094 at private colleges, $8,893 for state residents at public colleges, and $22,203 for out-of-state residents attending public universities. Although these numbers are averages, the actual costs of colleges are widely varied. A sad truth about this is that many students and their families don’t even know where all their money is going. Normally the money is paying for tuition; fees; housing and meals; books and school supplies; and personal and transportation expenses. As showed in the average cost of college, usually a school has a lower tuition for in-state residents and a vastly higher tuition for ou...
Although many don’t get the opportunity to go to college just for the mere fact of money. Which is in fact one of the reasons why many parents and elders actually go back to college later in their lives once they are more established, wealth wise. Is because now they can afford the cost of a college education. As a student I recognize there should be more options on how to pay for the cost of college that way many people can obtain a college education. Although, there a few ways to pay for college such as, scholarships, financial aid, and loans. But often times to keep a scholarship you have to maintain a certain grade or you could lose a scholarship, which could make it difficult or stressful for a student. And with loans they only increase debt. This is another reason why students don’t feel as
When we as human beings are born into this world, there are things that we have control over, and other things that we have no say in. We control what we do with our lives, what schools to attend, what activities to be a part of, and who we marry, for example. This seems to be quite fair, and for the most part, we take it for granted. While we do have these kinds of freedoms, there are other aspects of life that we have no control over. One thing that we are born into, is our social class. No matter who you are, there is a social class that you fall into, and you really have no say in it. The one social class that seems to be the most populated is the middle, or working class. These people usually classify themselves as being as normal, or as ordinary as they come. While that seems to be the common thought, there are plenty of middle class families that aren't as normal as they think. Depending on what class you belong to, your perception of "normal" tends to vary. So what exactly is "normal" to the average, middle, working class family?
So the system that is supposed to lead to financial stability later in life causes families to use nearly one hundred percent of their revenue in a given year to continue the cycle for their kin. The main culprit in this treacherous cycle is, you guessed it, the government. According to Paul F. Campos in his article “The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much” he cites Sandy Baum saying, “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.” (Campos). Essentially, the government has been cutting funding over the last decade due to various reasons. The recession in 2007 was a major contributor to this loss of funding. In fact, Lynn O 'Shaughnessy writes in her article “Why college tuition keeps rising”, “Since 2008, when the recession hit, total public funding for higher education has declined by 14.6 percent.” (.O’ Shaughnessy). Public funding is a lifeline for middle and lower class families when it comes to sending their children off to college, with such devastating cuts it is nearly impossible for
With the ever-increasing tuition and ever-tighten federal student aid, the number of students relying on student loan to fund a college education hits a historical peak. According to a survey conducted by an independent and nonprofit organization, two-thirds of college seniors graduated with loans in 2010, and each of them carried an average of $25,250 in debt. (Reed et. al., par. 2). My research question will focus on the profound effect of education debt on American college graduates’ lives, and my thesis statement will concentrate on the view that the education policymakers should improve financial aid programs and minimize the risks and adverse consequences of student loan borrowing.
In the current nation people live in money determines and limits a majority of what they are able to do with their everyday life. Money is the one thing in this nation that can open opportunities for people like no other. For some families money is not a problem while for others earning money is a struggle they have much throughout their life. In saying that, these families who are less well off than others are forced to take out loans for practically everything they own rather it be a car, a house, college, etc. In particular, college expenses are increasing at a rapid rate at which low income families cannot keep up with.
Fees and loans are too big of a load for young people to carry. A lot of students drop out do to the pressure of having to worry about all the loans they have to pay back after they are done with college. This should not be an issue to the student. According Iatham Emmmons, “Even worse, a large portion of students never receive funding at all due to the multitude of stipulations that must be adhered to in order to qualify for assistance. A major flaw in the current federal educational assistance programs is that the students’ parents’ income is used to calculate financial need” (Emmons 3). Even citizens who try to get help by applying for funding never end up getting it because they do not meet the needs required for the funding. Education should be p...