Rachel
L Meredith
1st
draft of Research paper
English
102-57
College
Tuition is Too High
Everyone that I am
talking to today has been to or goes to college. Does the words college tuition, financial
aid, FAFSA, minimum wages jobs make you want to grind your teeth? I am one of those college student who wants
to be in college but is struggling because of money. I did some research on how bad this tuition
costs has been effecting college students.
Nearly 80% of college students in the United States attend a public
institution (U.S. Department of Education, 2005). Many parents and students stress over not
having enough money to afford college without being in a large amount of debt
when finished. In 2012 and 2013
President Barack Obama put higher education “on notice” about the escalating
cost, which has become a vexing subject of public and academic debate (Nelson,
2013). College, now a days, is extremely
necessary for a successful and happy life.
Without college, the only way to get a decent amount of money is to work
in a ware house or factory doing hard work that you’re not getting paid enough
for. Or you could be like my mother and
get an account managing position because of seniority. Back when my mother got her job, about 35
years ago, she wasn’t required to have any schooling besides a high school diploma.
The American dream is to be successful and be able to have a life full of opportunity. The tuition costs have gotten so high that
people are dropping out, ruining our future generations, and causing debt for
students that takes years for them to get out of.
In order for most
to pay for school, they have to work which sometimes this job can take over
your studies and you’ll feel like you’re working more than doing school
work. However, the only reason you’re at
work is to get money to make your way through college. A new survey from Citigroup and Seventeen
magazine finds that almost 80 percent of students take at least a part-time job
during the school year. The survey calculated that on average, these students
work 19 hours a week (Fang, Marina). The
general rule of thumb regarding college studying is, and has been for a long
time, that for each class, students should spend approximately 2-3 of study
time for each hour that they spend in class. Many students carry a course
load of 15 credits, or approximately 15 hours of class time each week. Doing
some simple math indicates that your student should be spending roughly 30
hours of study time and 15 hours in class (Is Your College Student Investing
Enough Time Studying?) In addition,
every student has to find some time to sleep.
Each teacher has a mindset that their class is the only class that we,
as students, have on our calendar.
Professors aren’t exactly the most laid back and undemanding people you
would ever meet. Assignments are meant
to be perfect and exactly the way the professor expects it. This can become extremely stressful.
At the University
of Louisville, we are required to take general education classes. This includes: 6 hours of Written
Communication, 3 hours of Oral Communication, 3 hours of Mathematics, 10 hours
in Natural Sciences, 6 hours in Arts and Humanities, 9 hours in Social and
Behavioral Sciences, and 6 hours in Understanding Cultural Diversity. Most of these classes won’t have anything to
do with your major. Therefore, this
means that you have to spend an excessive amount of more money just to graduate.
These classes are generally taken in the
first few years of college to get them out of the way. These classes are usually not anything that
people that has chosen majors would be interested in. For instance, someone with a math degree
wants nothing to do with writing.
Therefore this leads to loosing people attention in the beginning out
their first few years of college. This
causes for them to want to drop out and move on to something different.
Dividing your
tuition money and the money you have to have in order to live can be stressful. It’s hard to have enough money to pay for
food, gas, housing, medical expenses, etc.
It’s almost impossible to have money for these necessities. You always have to put majority of your
earnings into paying for your tuition so when it comes to things like food,
gas, living expenses, medical bills, etc., it can be difficult to find enough
money to pay for all of that. They
wander why college students gain so much weight. We don’t have any money to pay for anything
remotely healthy. Everything we consume
are things like Taco Bell, Papa Johns, and Mc Donald’s.
The stress that
can come about from a college student is unreal. You get so tired from staying up all night to
do your work and then the hours that you put into your job can add up. This causes for students to want to drop out. When you don’t get enough sleep, this causes
for many physical and mental disorders.
Most importantly, when you don’t sleep, you are unable to perform
properly while in class or doing assignments.
Then we end up paying for all of this college and we can’t even absorb
the education because we are too exhausted and over worked.
The more people
that don’t go to school, the worse each generation is going to get. The future of America lies in the hands of
the students who are getting their education.
However, if more and more students are dropping out because they can’t
pay for it then this means the worst for our next few generations. Look at our leaders that we have acquired. Our leaders that we have now have gone to
school for many of years and learned more from it than you could ever just get
out a book. College is a necessity for
the leaders of America. Without college
we would be uneducated and clueless on how to take care of our country. In order to make political decisions, there
is a lot of background that needs to be covered to be qualified to make an
important decision. College is a big
deal for our country and future generations and it needs to be more accessible
for everyone. Our country has achieved
more great things and we are getting smarter and smarter every day. However, things will change if college tuition
gets out of hand to the point that it isn’t affordable anymore.
Students are
dropping out like flies from college and then left with thousands of dollars of
debt. Seven out of ten college seniors
from last year had student loan debt with an average of $29,400 per student (Project on student debt). In-state college tuition is at an average of
$7,020 per student a semester not including the housing which is as high as
$1700 a month at some schools. The
tuition rate went up 6.5% from this previous year. Economists have considered various models to
explain the phenomenon of the rising cost of tuition but only one has been
invoked more than any other: “the revenue theory of cost” advanced by Howard
Bowen in 1980 (Kimball, Bruce A). The
theory has been called “Bowen’s Law” and “Bowen’s Rule” since the 1990s and
2000s. It states:
1. The dominant goals of institutions are educational excellence, prestige, and
influence.
2. In quest of excellence, prestige, and influence, there is virtually no limit
to the amount of money an institution could spend for seemingly fruitful
educational needs.
3. Each institution raises all the money it can.
4. Each institution spends all it raises.
5. The cumulative effect of the preceding four laws is toward ever increasing
expenditure (Popik, Barry).
The only thing about this “law” is
that it is careless with the concern of the students and how much they are the
ones providing for the school, money wise.
Students who pay
for their college themselves have a 42% graduation rate. Students who have family pay their way have a
63% graduation rate. I am a student who
has no help from my parents and it is extremely hard to survive on my own. If parents do want to be able to help their
children out in college, they have to start a savings account as soon as their
child is born. College isn’t something
that you need to start saving up for when the time is getting closer for it. It’s not like a vacation. This requires years and years of savings.
There are many
conditions of which college tuition goes towards. Provides revenue to reduce the
student-faculty ratio, Supports merit pay increases for faculty and staff, Funds
requested student services initiatives, Funds college and school initiatives, Funds
financial aid programs targeted at maintaining economic accessibility of the
university, Offsets rising utilities’ costs, Funds critical academic capital
projects, Funds general libraries, Funds IT infrastructure (How Tuition Is Used). Decisions about public institution tuition
and state financial aid are made at the state level by state policy makers (Doyle,
William R.). The problem is that tuition is getting more expensive every year and
eventually, at this rate, people are not going to be able to go to school at
all. Then colleges really won’t be able
to make any money.
With the tuition
being so high, it is causing students to drop out, making our country go into a
scary future, and causing for students to go into so much debt that it almost
isn't worth it. We, as college students
are working extremely hard to better not only ourselves but everyone around us
as well. We want to do well and want to
succeed. College tuition is holding us
back from our dreams and expectations for ourselves. It is understandable that in a college, there is many of things that have
to be paid for, however, the cost of those necessities are getting more and
more expensive to the point that it is unaffordable. If college becomes unaffordable then our
future generations are going to be uneducated and we will not continue to move
forward in our country. This could cause
for tragic problems. We shouldn't have
to pay so much money to eventually only do something good for our country in
the future.
Works
Cited
Academic
U.S. Department of Education.
(2005). Digest of education statistics, 2005. Technical report, National
Center
for Education Statistics, Washington, DC.
Nelson, L. A. (2013, Feb. 13). On
notice, again. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved from
Kimball, Bruce A. "The
Rising Cost Of Higher Education: Charles Eliot's "Free Money"
Strategy And The
Beginning Of
Howard Bowen's "Revenue Theory Of Cost," 1869-1979." Journal
Of Higher Education 85.6 (2014): 886-912. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 9 Mar. 2015.
Doyle, William R. "The
Politics Of Public College Tuition And State Financial Aid." Journal
Of Higher
Education 83.5 (2012): 617-647. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
Non-academic
Fang, Marina. "Nearly 80
Percent Of Students Work While In School."ThinkProgress RSS. N.p.,
07 Aug.
2013. Web. 08
Mar. 2015.
"Is Your College Student
Investing Enough Time Studying?" Is Your College Student Investing
Enough
Time Studying? N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
“State by state data.” Project
on student debt:. N.P., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.
“Student dropout rates linked to
high stress over finances.” Salary.com.
N.P., n.d. Web. Oct. 2014.
"How Tuition Is Used." :
Tuition Dollars & Sense. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.
Popik, Barry. "The Big
Apple: Bowen’s Rule (Bowen’s Law; Bowen’s Revenue Theory of Cost)." The
Big
Apple: Bowen’s Rule (Bowen’s Law; Bowen’s Revenue
Theory of Cost). N.p., 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 10
Mar.
2015.
