Jason Ang
Education
Posting #4
Article: A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=studentloans&adxnnlx=1337055518-MZEh8SL/OmfxEPNKnGje4A
The Article talks of a young woman, Kelsey Griffith, a to be graduate at Ohio Northern University, that has to start paying off her 120,000 dollar loan. She works two jobs and will be living with her parents. Her mom even had to go off life insurance to help pay. These college debts have become a huge problem for students around the country.
Even though Kelsey's parents earn modest incomes from being a paramedic and a school teacher, their combined wages are not nearly enough to support Kelsey and her four sisters. Private school seemed like the right path for Kelsey because of the attitude given from the staff, but 4 years later, was it the right decision?
Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education. For all borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, with 10 percent owing more than $54,000 and 3 percent more than $100,000, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports. Average debt for bachelor degree graduates who took out loans ranges from under $10,000 at elite schools like Princeton and Williams College, which have plenty of wealthy students and enormous endowments, to nearly $50,000 at some private colleges with less affluent students and less financial aid.
Much like the mortgage brokers who promised pain-free borrowing to homeowners just a few years back, many colleges don’t offer warnings about student debt in the glossy brochures and pitch letters mailed to prospective students. Instead, reading from the same handbook as for-profit colleges, they urge students not to worry about the costs. That’s because most students don’t pay full price.
Even discounted, the price is beyond the means of many.
Yet too often, students and their parents listen without question.
- New York Times
Studying has become an essential tool in today's world in order to have a decent living. However, college costs have ridiculously increased in the past decades, making harder than ever for students to get higher education. Meanwhile, the economic cycle keeps on going and the students that choose to go to school end up with huge debts and the ones that opt for working earn minimum wages. This situation is allowing bigger gaps between poor and rich, what is even worse is that often even graduates are unable to find jobs because of our economy status.
ReplyDeletePeople should not stop going to school and forming a better life because of the cost, school should really consider remodeling their cost's systems and make it easier for students to study. That way people will want to keep studying and they will be confident that they will not go bankrupt even before starting their work career.
In today's society, statistically the rich are always the ones who win. They have all the resources and education to continue generations of success. The fact that the lower class can't afford to get a higher education only exacerbates the difference between the rich and the poor. The U.S. education system needs to find away to avoid this obstacle of class.
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