Paying for College Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Paying for College - Essay Example There are some people who believe that though college expenses is one of the largest disbursement in a person’s life span, it should be treated as an investment which will give better income, extended career prospects and higher personal contentment as returns throughout one’s life. However, this investment is only possible at a minimum cost therefore, it is necessary to reduce college expenditure. My goal, in this paper, is to establish the point that reduction of college expenditure is absolutely indispensable. To achieve this goal, I have put forward the various reasons for reducing college expenditure in five different sections. In the first section, I have discussed about the negative impact of the debt burden on the parents and students who take loans to pay for higher education because of which reducing cost of education becomes necessary. The second section tells us how this high cost is affecting parents of all classes in the society which makes minimization of higher education costs urgent. In the third section, I have thrown light upon the fact that the high cost of education has made it inaccessible to most of the undergraduates in U.S. which in turn, is creating a deficiency in the workforce of the country. I have ended the paper with the fourth section in which I have discussed how reduction of high costs of college education will make U.S. competitive in the global economy. I have concluded with the fifth section where I have uphold the point that reduction of college education cost is deemed necessary and discussed, in brief, the steps which colleges and the federal government should undertake to reduce the high cost of higher education. However, before discussing these five sections, I would like to put forward the statistical trends of the increase in cost of higher education in recent years. STATISTICAL TRENDS The tuition fees of colleges and universities have been increasing four times faster than the inflation rate (see Fig. 1 ). The cost of educating has soared 439% since 1982 for colleges. The average tuition and fees is around $20,000 annually at a public four year college and it is nearly $30,000- $35, 000 at a private college (Chaudhari). Moreover, it has been predicted that the cost will rise as high as $ 1, 25,000 for a public college and $ 2, 50,000 for a private college by 2015. On an average, families shell out $64 billion annually to send 13.9 million students to public colleges and universities (Immerwahr). According to Rampbell, on an average parents pay for around 37% of the total cost of attending colleges from their savings and income, around 10% of the cost is arranged through borrowing by parents and rest of the expenses are borne by the students themselves or by taking financial aids. Fig. 1 College Tuition and Fees vs. Overall Inflation Debt Burden. There have been recent debates on whether college education should be reduced or not. According to me, it should be reduced because studen ts who study with borrowed money have to face lot of difficulty in paying it back in the long term, though there are some fortunate ones who get grants and scholarships (Chaudhari). There is great concern over the amount of debt students have to take for higher education, though some people argue that financial aids are easily available and payable for students who are willing to