The biggest challenge college students have today is to pay for college or university. Every year college and university tuition goes up, by thousands of dollars. Majority of students can’t afford to pay for that, so they have to get jobs to pay off their debts or just to get buy or pay for school expenses. Because many students don’t get enough financial aid to help them cover the majority of their school cost, some students don’t bother going to school, and drop out working minimum wage jobs for the rest of their lives. The students who do choose to go to school have to take out loans until the day they graduate school. Which can become very stressful as the loans amount increase.
How this problem can be solved? By offering high school students
In today's generation college students struggle to attend higher education. Tuition has been higher than ever before to attend college. This is true, college students battle to go to college. A book that I read "They Say, I say" mentions, "many families are indeed struggling, in depths of recession, to pay for their children's college eduction." (Sanford, 191). Paying for college funds affect families as well as the student.
The student debt is rising higher each year. When students do not have enough money to go pay for college,
The increased costs of tuition and fees are making it more difficult for individuals to attend college, and they are being forced to drop out, having a major impact on graduation rates. Data stated that was stated in FACT SHEET on the President’s Plan to Make College More Affordable: A , Better Bargain for the Middle Class (2015), “The average tuition at a public four-year college has increased by more than 250 percent over the past three decades, while incomes for typical families grew by only 16 percent” (“Fact Sheet”, 2015). This is causing major stress and becoming a burden on the finances of the student and their families. In order to attend college, a large percentage of students will have borrow money because of
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).
For example, one of the many factors that often cause stress about college is the financial portion of it. Due to the now ever falling economic state of the middle class, more and more students find that college, unless paid for in full, is completely out of the question due to their predisposing financial problems. If a student were to take out loans, this
Student debt has become a large (and growing) problem. The high levels of student debt have served to perpetuate economic inequality, minimizing the opportunity of higher education. In a speech this year, President Obama called higher education "one of the crown jewels of this country" and said it was "the single most important way to get ahead.” The long term impact of student loans have given students every reason not to want to attend college, including myself. That alone has the potential to harm colleges and universities across the country. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said student debt is one reason that people between the ages of twenty and thirty seem to be living a prolonged adolescence, or living with their parents.
Third, a college degree is not the best option for everybody because it creates debt. College isn’t cheap and various colleges across the nation are raising their tuition up because of the availability of federal of student aid. Therefore, this results in an increasing amount of debt for many students. Many students are struggling to pay off their student debt. According to article Student Debt Tom Price states, “A majority of college graduates are leaving school owing more than $25,000, and nearly 7 million have defaulted on their student loans—student debt nationwide totals almost $1.3 trillion”. That is roughly half of the nation of college graduates who owe back student debt. Tuition is so high that many students cannot afford to pay it. Therefore, they have to take out student loans and although a person may have a full-time or part-time job it is still harder to pay back the loans on time. For example, Jasmin Johnson explains how she owes more than $65,000 in student debt, and she’s still a year away from graduating. Tuition is so high that many students cannot afford to pay it. Johnson explains “she couldn’t afford the cost and to keep up with her studies while working full time to pay her bills”. For this reason, we see that it is a burden to pay back student loans while maintaining other priorities. Eventually, this leads to debt. There has been a high percentage of college students who cannot pay back their students loans. According to Bridget Terry Long essay, she states, “we have reached an enrollment level in which a small percentage translates into thousands and thousands of students each year. And that is a problem that cannot be ignored.”(46) She points out that not enough people make enough money to afford college. Therefore, many people can’t pay their debt back and there should be action taken against this so that college can be affordable for everyone. As the cost of tuition, fees, and room and board increases then students will have more loans to pay. According to the article Student Debt, the chart displays that nearly “10 percent of universities have increased their tuition of $20,000 or more. Debt has become a big issue for every college student. It results in other issues such as,
If students had to pay for school themselves they would take their studies more seriously. If made to earn their tuition and housing funds, students would spend less time partying and more time working towards a future career. While it would be more difficult on the front end, it would reduce debt on the back end, especially for those who do not end up with quite the post-graduation paycheck they had been expecting freshman year. In previous generations, this idea was possible. People either worked their way through college or they did not go at all. This idea seems unrealistic in today’s competitive world of colleges. Student loans are a big reason for this change. If it were more difficult to borrow money for school, the amount of people who attend college would decrease. Instead they would fall into jobs that a high school diploma fully equips them for and that many college graduates end up holding either way (McArdle).
There are many different factors in our world today that can have a major impact on why some students finish college and attain their degree and why others either drop out or do not pursue it at all. One is disparities in debt, which is the biggest factor in why college students drop out and do not attain their degree. There are two theories that predict which students have a greater chance of obtaining the most debt. The other is racial/ethnic disparities; there are many socioeconomic factors that limit minority groups from attaining their degrees compared to the white population. Inequalities in college degree attainment are a big problem in our world today, this can be caused by a variety of reasons and we must be able to come up with
College students across the nation suppress a shudder when the phrase is uttered. They try to push it to the back of their mind, to save the problem for another day. Sadly, it cannot be ignored forever. Student loans over the United States have been becoming more frequent and increasing in size for years. According to M. Swig, Hickey, and S. Swig, there are now 41 million Americans burdened with having to pay student loans back. While one may question if taking out a student loan in the thousands is worth it, one should consider today 's society. To most people, college is the only option. Parents, families, and neighbors almost force it upon the young adults because they believe it’s the only way for them to be successful. Much of the nation views a higher education as the key component in an individual 's future job, wealth, and therefore general happiness. It is almost to the point where not attending would be comparable to breaking a social norm.
The problem, of course, is that the cost of college tuition has skyrocketed. Students and their families are getting buried deeper and deeper in debt trying to pay for college. Public universities, once havens of affordable, quality college education, have been hit the hardest. Almost every state in America has cut, and/or is cutting funding for higher education (Ortiz 1). It’s a problem that has quickly become a national crisis. The cost of college is very high compared to how the economy has been and how wages and financial aid have not risen with the cost of tuition. This makes it harder for students to graduate and brings a lot of stress to their lives. Without the funding that is needed many students drop out or take a longer time finishing
There has been a moment in everyone’s life where they have dug too deep to jump back out and abandon the end goal. Students across the country that begin their junior year of high school are thinking about which choice of colleges they have in mind. One of the major problems that keeps a student back like solid steel chain is the tuition it cost for University admission. Students working their hardest throughout their high school career and having the ever conscious situation of financial problems stress them out. Students become discouraged when one of the main reasons for being unable to attend their dream college, is their inability to afford the yearly tuition cost of attendance. Students are then forced to face reality, in the sense that,
A widely discussed problem in the United States is the high cost of college education along with the soaring levels of student debt. A major factor argued to be causing the problem is the easy access that students have to loans when financing a college education. Allowing students to borrow money without regard to their credit or ability to repay the loan enables colleges to continually raise tuition rates.
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.
If an aspiring college student doesn’t have the necessary funds to attend school, there is another option they could use to pay for school. Student loans are a popular choice so that the student can pay for school. While this may seem like a great option for affording school, it can be a devil in disguise for many. The New York Times reports that Americans owe over 1.4 trillion dollars in student loan debt (Kelly 1). This happens when a college student takes loans with the belief that the college degree they get will help them achieve a higher salary which will in turn will help them pay off their debt. This often isn’t the case. A student takes the loans and attends school, but does not receive the salary that they were hoping to acquire from attending school. A standard payment plan for students is to pay off their debt in ten years, but according to a study conducted by US News, the average bachelor degree holder takes twenty-one years to pay off (Bidwell 1). This is a common occurrence as well, a report conducted by The Institute for Collee Access and Success shows that in 2012, seventy-one percent of college graduates had student debt (Serrato 1). The current system that the government offers to help those struggling to afford a secondary education is a flawed program that needs restructuring.