Education

I had the good fortune to graduate from a reputable school without accruing any debt from student loans. My grandparents had the foresight and my family had the luck of being able to provide me with such an education. When I graduated from school my credit was good. This cannot be said for most students who will graduate from public universities in this country, let alone those will graduate from private universities.
Education is a gateway to a better life. Those who receive a college degree will make nearly twice as much money (average $51,554) as those who graduate with a high school degree (average $28,645), according to the US Census Bureau. From this income increase one can assume less likelihood of one’s being incarcerated and also increases the likelihood of one being able to contribute to society.
Now, in order to understand what one needs to spend even at the cheapest institution for a higher education it will require a small amount of math. The University I attended for my degree was the University of Texas at Austin, one of the less expensive public universities in the country. For one academic year the cost will be around $9,500. That means that for four years the student is already looking at $38,000. The average American makes $43,000 a year. Once you factor in other costs while attending the University, the notion of paying for university becomes truly daunting. A University of that size (nearly 55,000 students) means that housing is limited. At best a student can live on campus for two years. But the cost of housing is not included in the tuition. Let’s ignore that for a moment and concentrate on the last two years.
So, once a person has finished their first two years they have to look for an apartment off-campus. That means that they, at best, will be paying $500/month for rent. That, if living in a bad neighborhood, will include water, electricity, gas, etc. But, because of living in a bad neighborhood, which is far from campus, they are going to have to have a car in order to get around because of the sorry state of most pubic transportation systems in this country. So, let’s do the math on that: $500x 9 months = $4500. That means for the last two years of college, that person is paying $9,000 to live. Add in a car, which at best would be a few thousand dollars. Car insurance is in Texas averages to about $1,809 a year which is slightly above national average. That means the insurance will be $3,618 for two years. Now let’s add in food that someone is going to have to pay for as they are going through school. At best, someone can probably get by on $100/week. So, nine months of school is 36 weeks, so that’s another $3,600. That’s not even including a computer which has become an obligatory item while in college, nor does it include the costs for entertainment on the weekends and things of that sort. Nor does it include gas money. But let’s forget all those costs while doing these calculations.
For the last two years of college someone is going to have to pay $19,000 for school tuition. $9,000 will go to rent. $2,000 for a car. $3,618 for insurance, and another $7,200 for food. That gives us a grand total of $40,818 for two years of college at a public university. Sure, there are partial scholarships that people can receive, there are work for tuition programs, which will inevitably cut that amount of time that one can spend studying and preparing themselves for class, GRE, LSAT, MKAT, and GMAT tests. There are grants given by the state, Pell Grants, which have been frozen at $4,050 a year since 2003. In 2006 $12.5 billion was cut from the Pell Grant system. There are private student loans that one can take out which can take as many as thirty years to repay because of the high rate of interest on the loan.
So what does this do? It creates a system where ambitious young people that wish to be educated in any number of fields are strapped with debt for most of the rest of their lives. They are required to repay debts for improving themselves; they are required to repay someone for becoming an even greater contributor to society. It is odd to me that ostensibly society penalizes anyone that wishes to ascend socio-economic classes through education. It strikes me as odd that college has become an inaccessible avenue by which one can change his or herself. The education system is broken; the math that I have just demonstrated easily displays this. No one can afford to become educated any longer, and that is one of the many reasons why the United States is broken.