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Summary Of Affordable Higher Education: Fantasy Or Reality?

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Estefany Villafan
Professor Ronald Richardson
ENG 114 - A2
21 October 2014
Affordable Higher Education: Fantasy or Reality? “Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 budget allocated nearly $1 billion more to prison spending than to higher education”, reported Hansook Oh and Mona Adem in “California Budgets $1 Million More to Prisons than Higher Education and Leaves Students Hanging.” Many students either cannot attend college or drop out because they cannot afford to continue their higher education. College students are not succeeding in college and the United States is falling behind in the percentage of people having a degree beyond high school. The whole issue of prison systems in California and in the United States is talked about extensively but to …show more content…

Let us look at the facts: California has the greatest number of prisoners. According to Oh and Adem California’s higher education received 13 percent less state funding in 2011 than it did in 1980, while funding for prisons expanded 436 percent during the same period.” A teen in California receives a large amount of college guidance. There are supportive teachers and guidance counselors who will help teens get into college however once they are in college they face student debt with no one to get help from. Similarly there are juvenile delinquency facilities being built for millions of dollars. In both these instances who loses? The student and the juvenile delinquent. The system is set up that if people succeed they go to college and pay high loan interests and pile on debt and if they don’t they can end up in jail from age 16 and on adding to the prison population, helping build more prisons and in both situations making someone else very rich. Children are the future, which is why the government should use their money for education and not for prisons. If the government spend more on education the cycle of going to prison and not school will be broke. We need to build an economy that does not rely on the failures of others to make money. An economy that knows no other benefit than that of education. There will be more opportunities for those students who cannot afford to pay for higher education, they will be more willing to look into colleges and not turning away from college because its out of their financial reach. As the article,“California Budgets” explains that students should not be made responsible for the economy and having access to affordable education should be a right for every American. Universities and prisons are in competition to get the more funds but this should be clear to politicians and school officials that education is more important. It is simple;

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