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The Cost of College Blog

What's Up With College?

College is the target for many high reaching High School students, and for many good reasons too. I know that for me it was a way to deepen my understanding of many things, while also giving me a chance to have a good job in the future. You automatically achieve a ticket to the middle class( in most cases), you gain the ability to enrich your smarts, dreams, and aspirations, but not only this, you also get to do this along with people who have minds that work very similar to yours. The only problem in trying to do this is that you may have a mountain of debt waiting for you at the end of the line. People would argue that this debt is what college should cost, because it’s an investment for the future, but people would also argue that college should cost you way less money than right now, because right now it is way too much. These two arguments lead us to two sides. Is college a place that should rightfully cost the amount that it does, or should College cost you significantly less than its current prices? First let's explore the two sides of reason.

The Cost of College is Right and Fair

For why college should cost as much as it does let’s explore the opinions and facts of a few articles. In the article “Democrats Love to Promise Free College, So Why Did the U.K. Recently Start Charging Tuition?”  We can find that the article shows a before and after result of tuition based college. With the before it shows many things that we would look down upon in the U.S. First off is that spots in the university would be limited, since the funding is limited, leading to a limited number of spots. The biggest problem with this is that those spots would be given to those of higher status(the rich.) I’m not saying that it would work like that in the U.S., but the fact that there would be limited spots still remains. After a switch to colleges that charge the students it was found that the colleges began vastly taking in a greater number of students. At the price of $11,000 it was shown in the article that students of poorer background that attended college increased by 75%. People who may think that this wouldn’t be the case in the U.S. Would most likely be found to be wrong. In the article “What Does Free College Really Mean?” it is stated, “ “One concern — raised by others such as Matt Chingos at the Urban Institute — is that most of the benefits of free college plans accrue to higher-income families.” The loans may be a lot or a little, but colleges want to have you think of it as an investment for the future.

The Cost of College is Atrocious and Should Be lowered

The cost of college is found many times to be “Atrocious” and we can find that many articles would suggest the same. In the article “UsNews” it is said the average cost of colleges were, “$41,426 at private colleges, $11,260 for state residents at public colleges and $27,120 for out-of-state students at state schools, according to data reported to the U.S. News in an annual survey”. This is A lot! This is not only a lot but if we showed the average annual growth rate of the cost college compared to the average growth rate of job wages people might start to turn heads. In an article on Forbes titled “Price Of College Increasing Almost 8 Times Faster Than Wages” we can see that college is only becoming more and more unaffordable. The article shows that the annual cost of college is increasing at a rate of 2.6% while the annual growth of job wages is increasing at 0.3%. One can only say wow to this. College is becoming out of reach for many people, due to the fact that they just aren’t getting paid enough. Maybe if the pay of a job could keep up with the price of college then maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal, but that is not this case. One could only think of how many students decide to not go to college because of the thought “is it worth it?”. At the price it is now maybe not. The amount of financial burden a student may carry could lead to a not so happy life in college. Maybe there should be a compromise of some sort with the current system, so that the students could worry more about what they should turn in, and not about how much they will have to pay.

My Personal Thoughts On The Matter

To put this bluntly, I don’t think that college should cost the outrageous amount that it does. In my personal opinion knowledge is a public good, therefore college should be too. Knowledge is what makes the human race different from any other species. We innovate, design, build and through progress we form a better society, whereas for other species I couldn’t say the same. College is the key for most people to help. By saying this I mean that whether it be politics, engineering, designing, or even something as simple as art, College is what helps many people to better these areas of expertise. Of course I know that free college is unrealistic, because of the effects of it, being lower quality teaching, less supplies, or even less amount of spots, but if not this I think that College should be cheaper through some means. We could increase taxes(Probably unpopular opinion), do fundraisers, or even have the government cover costs. Any way we could do it is great. I believe that College is something that all people should have the ability to attend regardless of how much money they have, or how smart they are perceived to be.

Works Cited

-maldonado, Camilo. “Price Of College Increasing Almost 8 Times Faster Than Wages.” Https://Www.forbes.com/Sites/Camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/Price-of-College-Increasing-Almost-8-Times-Faster-than-Wages/#5cca500d66c1, Forbes, 24 July 2018.

-Bayer, Casey. “What Does Free College Really Mean?”           https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/17/01/what-does-free-college-really-mean, 17 Jan. 2017.

-Wiseman, Oliver. “Democrats Love To Promise Free College, So Why Did the U.K. Recently Start Charging Tuition?” Https://Reason.com/2019/08/22/Democrats-Love-to-Promise-Free-College-but-Why-Did-u-k-Recently-Started-Charging-Tuition/, 22 Aug. 2019.

-Powell, Farran, and Emma Kerr. “What You Need to Know About College Tuition Costs.” Https://Www.usnews.com/Education/Best-Colleges/Paying-for-College/Articles/What-You-Need-to-Know-about-College-Tuition-Costs, 18 Sept. 2019.