Imagine only paying for transportation, meals, supplies, room, board for college, and small college fees. This is exactly what other countries like Germany and Sweden are doing. Instead of having students pay an enormous amount for their education, these countries only require an individual to pay for their own basic needs with a small tuition fee as well. It is no surprise that students from the U.S are traveling overseas to get these benefits. In the meantime, colleges in the U.S have only become more expensive each year, and it’s greatly affecting graduating high school students since each student has to find a way to pay for his or her college tuition. The college graduates are then affected because they have to pay for the outrageous debt …show more content…
and tuition plays a major role in students’ decision for attending college. Students according to a 2008 national survey of roughly 1800 students who qualified to attend college 1000 students of those 1800 did not attend college at all. The main reason claimed by 80 percent of the “non-college-goers” was due to lack of money, more especially not enough grant aid. Although a student was well qualified to attend college having no financial aid made their choice to attend impossible. On the other hand, students who couldn’t receive enough grant aid sought other alternatives to go into college like getting loans. Depending on the amount of years one chooses to attend college it can rack up to an unbelievable amount. According to Edvisors, a financial aid website, “The class of 2015 graduated with $35,051 in student debt on average.” Imagine that! It’s no wonder that the students who didn’t receive enough grant aid chose not to attend college. It was because they did not want to accumulate a debt that in most cases they would have to pay throughout their lives, claiming that tuition cost is too much for …show more content…
Their claim might be that in having free-tuition colleges and universities the education system will lose its value on students. Whereas, knowing that students are paying for class course they are more focused and determined. They don 't want their money to be a waste. And I agree, however there are other ways to approach this. In Germany one still has to pay for their education, but with a small tuition fee and their own living expenses. In fact, international students at Germany have to pay an annual of approximately $6,300 in tuition and living expenses where 90 percent goes to paying one’s living expenses and the other 10 percent goes into university fees. After all in the U.S, the average annual cost for attending college is about $35,000 where about only 30 percent of that money goes to living expenses; compare that to the 90 percent in Germany. We should consider lowering the prices of tuition where students still feel the need to focus since after all they are still paying for the college classes. The ultimate goal is not to be free-tuition but to lower it just enough that individuals who want to pursue a career will be
Once a person graduates from high school they are left with a difficult decision, wither to go to college or not. Some families this is not an option, their kid will go no matter what, but many students do not want to go to school and have so much student debt by the time they finish that they will have to pay off that they decide that college is not worth it. According to Craig Smith in his article in Education Digest he says, “too many families cannot afford to send their children to college so the student is left with making the decision on wither to go to college and collect debt or just skip college altogether” (Smith 42). He has a good point. Too many students feel like they have to pay so much yet they are not really getting much out of it. Smith later on in his article states, “We must stop balancing our state and institutional budgets on the backs of students and families” (Smith 46). School should not be all about money, it should be about helping the students get the education that they need so they can make it out in the big world. If a student is so worried about how they are going to pay their school bill they are not going to be focusing on their class work and it ...
Calling a college education “free” is a contradiction because nothing in life is truly free. Someone will be responsible for paying for this education, even if it is not the person receiving it. To support this flood of hopeful college students, the American Government will have to heavily tax the working and upper classes. Taxes will have to be inflated to compensate for the price of college, and in some cases, may become outrageously high. If the upper class becomes constantly taxed, what keeps them from dropping down a class? What keeps the middle class from becoming the lower class? In an extreme situation, if the middle and upper classes were constantly taxed, there risks a problem of creating a bigger class divide. Maybe the plan to pay for college education starts out with only the rich being taxed. In America, there are roughly 324 million people. This number increases every eight seconds, so there is a constant increase of citizens. Imagine if half of that number decides to go to college. College education is free for them, but their tuition is paid for by the upper class. Now, average college tuition runs for about $9,410 for State Universities, and around $32,405 for out of state students. This amount of money, per student, is paid for by the upper class’s taxes. Taxes are raised higher and higher to pay for all these students until they cannot be raised any further. The upper
How does the rising cost of college tuition affect us? Every year thousands of students attend a college or university, usually of their choice, with the goal of achieving a higher education and to better their future. The cost of attending college is too high and it needs to go down; there needs to be more scholarship and grant opportunities. The high cost of attending college is a major reason that students aren’t able to achieve higher education; others take this as a challenge and it is motivation for them to work harder to achieve their goal. One might ask why would someone want to spend money to receive more education and miss out on more years of work that they could’ve performed? For many, it is so they can receive more salary for the jobs that they will have later in life, also so that they can get training for their wanted career. The cost of attending college is high and continues to rise without indications of decreasing. The rising cost has many benefits such as earning more pay, but it also has its disadvantages such as the debt that is accumulated from student loans. Not everyone can afford to drop down thousands of dollars and attend school for a few more years. Students who wish to receive a post-secondary education must decide whether it is the right choice for them depending on their financial standpoint, meaning that they must decide if they have the resources to further their education.
Why should we be allowed to have the opportunity to have free higher education or decrease the cost of it? Going to college should be our right and cost of tuition should not affect our decision on whether to go or not. The ability to have free higher education with little or no cost can open the door and create many great different paths for us. The more education we have, the more opportunities grow, but that can’t happen to all of us due to tuition costs or even being in debt with loans for not being able to have the money to being with. With tuition being eliminated or decreased, people would attend college more not saying a lot would, but just the fact that more people would consider college. Germany abolished tuition which provides a model for the United
College graduates are already experiencing difficulty finding well-paying jobs and careers today. Free tuition does nothing to help grow the job market but just adds competition through degree inflation. This could cause degrees to be less meaningful and a rise in unemployment with college graduates aiming for better jobs. While we can acknowledge that these programs may be utilized in other countries with some success, many of these cultures have static labor markets, strict entrance requirements for their universities, and have other cultural limitations that prevent pursuit of degree by average or slightly above average students. A student who has only been academically focused without work experience, may not be the best candidate for a job as someone with less education and more experience. In fact, Germany, a country that offers free college based on merit, actually graduates fewer college
There is no doubt that college is expensive, price tags for some universities go over a quarter of a million for just a bachelors degree! (That’s if you graduate in four too). The extravagant price for college is no doubt crazy. Trying to better yourself and your future shouldn’t cost $250,000 plus. If public universities were to be free a plethora of problems could be solved instantly. According to Forbes the National student loan debt has surpassed 1.2 trillion dollars (Denhart )! This number is growing exponentially as more students enroll in to college. Why question then whether college should be free? Well, this number is the total amount of student loan debt from all students that have exited college. Some of these students are freshly graduated while some are aged with the wisdom trying to pay their loans back. If public universities were to be free and funded by our federal government, our government would pay this amount within ten years. Relatively a short amount of time considering that the student loan debt is an accumulation debt from students that have graduated more than ten year ago, also this also greatly increase with the following years as well.
There are so many students who would extremely grateful to attend any four year institution but can’t because of the lack of funds. College life can be very stressful, and the process can is very frustrating to most students the first two years. When the cost of college tuition is compared to the 21 century financial economy the cost does not make sense, because for a middle-class family it is impossible to afford sending their child to any four-year institution. It hard for students to graduate with the stress to pay-off hundreds and thousands of dollars in loans. Going to college is stressful enough without the need to worry about how we’re going to pay for it and what other costs will continue to rise with getting a degree afterwards. With the current increase of unemployment rate and the thought of going to college seems like a farfetched goal. Many people choice not to attend a four year institution, because they did receive a scholarship or enough government funding. Having a college background is very important for professional growth, it will eventually limit career opportunities. My stand point is, you may not leave college doing the same thing you began with but the life experience is endless. College experience not only gives knowledge that builds you into a better person by giving a broader erosion. With the cost of tuition increasing will hurt our generation, by causing physical and mental stress but in the end it will all pay off. Not all colleges are for the blame; some of the blame is our economy and other factors play a big roll. As students we need to be aware of all our resources offered, such as Pell Grants, and government scholarships. For example, the some states will pay for a student’s college if they graduate high school with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. There are many states that are willing to pay for all or some of college tuition only if students are willing to use
This requires colleges and universities to raise tuition to students to cover the spread. The interesting fact is that, per Belkin, “Universities are not spending more money educating students than they have in the past.” With this two things are known so far; the first is that the government has reduced its funding per student and that the cost to educate each student has not risen. Dr. Fichtenbaum is referenced in the article, “How to get College Tuition Under Control” by Douglas Belkin in which he says, “Between 1987 and 2012, in real dollars, government support has declined from $8,497 to $5,906 per student.” To put the cost of tuition in perspective Roger Fillion, who wrote the article “Tackling Tuition,” also talks about how tuition has increased by 722% since 1983 while the next closest comparison is healthcare cost which have increased by 356% since 1983 (17-19). Douglas Belkin also points out the fact that states are covering less of colleges operating costs which must be paid for somehow. Therefore, the increase in tuition must be coming from other sources. In the same article, Dr. Fichtenbaum talks about what has caused college tuition to rise. The reason that many people state
As public support for colleges is reduced, as tuition and fees skyrocket, and as financial aid is shifted away from poor and working-class students to students with affluent backgrounds and high SAT scores, students are going into greater and greater debt in order to go to college at all. These days, two out of three students getting bachelor’s degree have student debt. At public universities ‘only’ 62 percent of graduates are in debt, at private nonprofit
Those who think a college education is not worth it believe that college can become a setback in life due to the thousands of dollars that college students are spending on tuition and books. Students who attend college will not have the money to purchase a home, spend money on family, vacations, or any other costly items and bills. On the other hand, most college students end up paying for their college loans all of their life or go into debt. They will never have money to rely on since their credit cards will be racking up interest for college loans that need to be paid off. As stated by Paul Taylor in Michelle Adam’s report, the cost of a college education has been at a record level and the cost of tuition and fees has more than tripled which is causing a rise in student debt (58). With rising prices, the economy is making it more difficult for people to afford a college education.
There are over 40 countries that offer tuition- free college. For example, Germany , Finland, France, Sweden, and Norway. Currently in Germany their higher education facilities are completely funded by the public, about 2.4 million students do not pay anything for tuition. (College Access and Affordability: USA vs. the World. (n.d.). Retrieved May 25, 2016, from http://www.valuecolleges.com/collegecosts/). This evidence shows that the German government perceived that higher education costs were holding back their students from attending, so the German government made it easier for them to attend. There are many young adults from the United States that have said no to American higher education costs and have moved to Europe to attend colleges
Over the years, society has changed. During the old times, a high school diploma was sufficient. Acquiring a high school diploma was an achievement that families used to brag about when their children received it. In Lebanon, most children used to complete school up to ninth grade where they would receive their Brevet certificate and then drop out of school believing that the Brevet certificate was enough to provide them with a job. However, nowadays the minimum requirement of any regular job such as a bank clerk or an office boy requires a college degree. In fact, with the progression of time and deterioration of the economy, the only guarantee of acquiring a job is having a Masters degree. How are students expected to obtain such a degree with such a bad economy and high college tuition fees? The American University of Beirut recently decided to raise tuition fees by six percent. The students as expected responded with a strike and boycotted their classes. A strike is necessary to demonstrate that students will not remain neutral to further tuition increases, for “education is a r...
If you add that up with the tuition it would be $18,943 and for some have no choice but to live on campus because they don’t live close to it and don’t have transportation to get their everyday day so it leads them to pay that extra fee by living there and putting them in more debt. Then there are the books you need for the classes which is $1,146 on average a year for a student. Then all the extra stuff you need like food, gas, clothes etc. it keeps adding up. That is the problem every other year since 2000 college tuition has been rising and still is, in 2004 it was $4,805 since then it nearly doubled in cost. The price causes students to be in debt and usually for more students not to attend college due to it. Overall U.S. debt for college students is 1.2 trillion dollars and that’s insane and since 2004 it has been going up constantly and is not stopping anytime soon. Seventy percent of students graduate with college debt to pay back. Even with financial aid it still isn’t enough for families to send their kids off to college and sometimes it doesn’t go to the neediest kids instead going to the rich. A lot of college students have full-time or part-time jobs just to pay for extra needed stuff like books, food, gas, and tuition. Having a job because they have no other option or money to pay for stuff which takes away valuable time from their studies to
Free higher education has been seen successfully in places such as Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Germany to name a few. Most see this as a positive example to show if they can do it, than why can’t we. Germany is seemingly proof that free higher education can be accomplished easily by means of protest and by participation in politics (Wiener). This is definitely not the case here in America. The reason why that education system would work is because these countries are all vastly different from the U.S. According to the article “Free College in Europe isn’t Really Free,” the U.S. has an enrollment rate of 94% while Germany and other European countries are at about 62% enrollment (Jackson). With a much smaller country than us, they also have a significantly smaller amount of people attending college. Our country is simply much too large and populated to be able to achieve that. These countries also pay much more in taxes than we do. Therefore, free higher education is an unrealistic expectation for such a vast country as
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...