Higher Education During The 21st Century

College tuition has been an increasingly intense topic of discussion over the years. The costs of higher education have been debated by many people, and it has been discussed as to whether costs are becoming too high for students to afford. College has become more and more popular, and now as many as 20 million students attend universities reported by The National Center for Education Statistics (1). The value of a college degree is immense, but college tuition is becoming too expensive for students to afford, and furthering the problem are students’ lack of knowledge on how to pay and earn money towards their college degree.

Not only does the increasing cost of attending college affect a student, but unemployment rates also cause the student’s debt to continue longer than it should. Recently the unemployment rate in America has gone up dramatically, due to the economy crash. As of January 2008, the unemployment rate started increasing, starting at 5% unemployment, and in 2010, the unemployment rate was up to 9.8% (“Database”).

Higher education has been known by many Americans as a luxury for only those who can afford it if not being forever in debt with student loans. The price of higher education has been in debate for many years but it still has not ceased to come into an agreement. Should higher education lower its price or is it worth paying for it? As Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus argue in their article “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?” there are colleges worth mentioning about how successful their financial management has been correlated with their students success. The issue has also come into attention for Sanford J. Ungar, as he explains in his article “The New Liberal Arts,” although liberal arts education may be have its misconceptions, it does pay for its price. Hence, higher education (whether from a regular university or a liberal arts college) is worth the price, as it prepares individuals for the real world more than any other kind of education, it is an unique time were students are allowed to explore and put their abilities into test and it is the opportunity for many to overcome the many obstacles life has to offer.

The U.S. is home to some of the greatest colleges and universities in the world. But with an overwhelming 1.3 million students graduating with an average student loan debt of $29,000 each and with youth unemployment elevated, the question of whether or not college tuition is worth the money arises (The Institute for College Access & Success, 2013). Higher education faces intimidating challenges: continually rising costs, access and completion problems, constant changing of technology, and responsibility pressures from state and federal officials. But no challenge is more intimidating than the fundamental question that many Americans face to ask themselves, "Is college worth the cost?" As a result of the economic turn down, many students who graduate are not finding well-paying jobs, either within their field of study or not.

The increasing cost of higher education in the United States has been a continuing topic for debate in recent decades. American society emphasizes the importance of education after high school, yet the cost of higher education and advanced degrees continually rises at a greater rate than inflation in the 1970’s. According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, cost factors prevent 48% of college-qualified high school graduates from pursuing further education (McKeon, 2004, p. 45). The current system requires the majority of students to accumulate extensive debt with the expectation that they gain rewarding post-graduate employment to repay their loans.

Colleges are noticing a drop in students’ interest in a higher education, because it forces them to fall into poverty. Obtaining a higher education is a dream of many working class citizens, but the price to go to a choice college is not available economically. The majority of students use some type of student loan, they have become the norm for attending college (Johnston, Roten 24). College is becoming unaffordable to many lower class students. With tuition prices this high, students are backing out of school and looking for jobs that only require a high school diploma. Student loans should help people, but it is only hurting them because they feel like they can never repay it. Especially since student debt continues to rise. “Student loan debt rose by 328 percent from $241 million in 2003 to $1.08 trillion in 2013, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York” (Johnston, Roten 25).

America’s education system has been in a state of distress for the past decade, but garnished headlines recently as the student loan debt crisis reached over a trillion dollars. In conjunction with that, tuition is no longer the only obstacle a student faces when considering their future. As generations come and go, universities have slowly, but surely, been angling their education in a way to favor profit over knowledge. Because of the new direction higher education models are taking, Magdalena Kay questions her readers, “is there a problem with students, with teachers, with administrators, or maybe

Higher education comes at an extremely high price. The excitement of graduating college to land the six-figure job is soon destroyed when students realize how much debt they’ve obtained. Dreams of owning a house and starting a family are shattered by the money borrowed to provide and guarantee students an excellent future. Instead of waiting to land the ideal job, students work multiple jobs to help ends meet. Struggling to stay afloat, millions of students become victims of one of the major economic crisis in the United States today; Student debt.

With the recovery from the Great Recession the labor market has refueled the controversial debate about the value of a college degree. Is a college degree worth the amount of debt that will compile over four or more years of higher education? Even though an individual who obtains a college degree has an unemployment rate below the national average, there is evidence that many recent college graduates are struggling to find acceptable and well paying jobs. At the same time, college tuition is steadily rising, while college graduates are finding themselves without employment and swimming in a substantial amount debt from student loans.

In today’s world there are few things more important to obtaining a good career and being successful in life than acquiring a college degree, but this increased importance on getting a degree has also coincided with a large increase to the financial cost of obtaining one. This majority of this cost comes from ever increasing tuition rates and the rising price of textbooks, neither of which appear to be slowing down. Additionally, as the financial burden of attending college continues to grow, the students who are being forced to shoulder the majority of these costs are acquiring large amounts of debt due to college loans or simply foregoing a college education altogether. As the cost of education nears a breaking point, we must ask ourselves what measures we can take to improve the situation.

The purpose of this report is to inform the chancellor of the issue surrounding higher education. The issue of higher education is that it’s failing to give millions of student’s quality degrees at a reasonable cost. College costs and student debt have been rising for the past years and it continues to rise. States don’t invest enough in schools to make colleges more affordable which leads to an increase of tuition cost and student loans.

Although the future of higher education may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial in terms of today’s concern over unemployment. With the way the job force has changed due to the fall of the economy, we can no longer rely on our trade or jobs that were lucrative and provided enough income for our families in the past. As it has been proven at Evergreen State College, “despite the university’s reputation as a countercultural bastion, 82 percent of its graduates found full-time employment within a year, and 93 percent of those who applied got into graduate schools” (188). This idea alone proves the fact that one has a larger change of attaining a job, if one has a college education. The notion of having a better likelihood of obtaining a job, or broadening my options, puts my mind at ease about unemployment.

Today colleges are growing more and more necessary for attaining a solid path towards a successful career, yet the rapidly increasing cost of tuition is driving students away from their dream of attending college, due to the preposterous amount of money that is now being demanded by colleges across the nation and world as a whole. It is sad to see students being turned away from a successful future due to the money-hungry nature of the universities that dot the globe. More and more impossible it is becoming to have a “rags-to-riches” scenario that used to highlight the American Dream, as if a student doesn’t have the riches to afford a higher education and the tuition that is drug upon its coattails, then our society is doomed to be clothed in rags forever, unless major changes are brought about to restructure and end the indefatigable growth of tuition rates across the board.

The cost of tuition for higher education is quickly rising. Over half of college freshmen show some concern with how to pay for college. This is the highest this number has been since 1971 (Marill and O’Leary 64-66, 93). The amount of college graduate debt has been rapidly increasing also. With limited jobs available because of the high unemployment rate, college graduates find themselves staying in debt even longer. Although grants and financial aid are available to students, students still struggle to pay for their college tuition. Higher education costs are prohibitively expensive because the state’s revenue is low, the unemployment rate is high, and graduates cannot pay off their student loans.

The increasing cost of higher education in the United States has been a continuing topic for debate in recent decades. American society emphasizes the importance of education after high school, yet the cost of undergraduate and advanced degrees continually rises at a greater rate than inflation. According to the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, cost factors prevent 48% of college-qualified high school graduates from pursuing further education (McKeon, 2004, p. 45). The current system requires the majority of students to accumulate extensive debt with the expectation that they gain lucrative post-graduate employment to repay their loans.