As a current college student the idea of debt is not at the forefront of my mind. However time and time again I am told that once college ends, the debt that I have accumulated will be a rock that will be hard to escape from under. This is made more and more real with every article I read about millennials moving back in with there parents after college. There are many ideas in this election cycle about how to make college more affordable and the burden of debt lesser.
With college being the new equivalent to a "high school degree" from our parents generation, it makes finding a good job without one increasingly difficult. However the main difference between our parents generation and ours is the aggressively rising cost of college tuition. Today nearly 20% of all people with student debt end up defaulting on there loans because they can not afford them. There are current government programs in the works to try and help lower the cost of college affordability. The two main sides on the issue of college affordability are of course Republican and Democrat because, this is American after all.
The democrats are in favor of raising taxes to reduce the cost of college by having the government subsidize more of the cost, and in turn with the higher education Americans will receive this will lead to spur in economic growth which will in turn hopefully cancel out the increase in taxes needed for the government subsidization. On the other hand the republicans believe that college students have been negatively affected by government subsidize, and that Colleges have taken advantage of these subsidies by increasing there cost of tuition to get more money from both the student and the government. With this in mind the Republican plan is to cut most of the funding for these subsidies, such as Pell Grants and Public Service Loan Forgiveness to name a few. This is believed to cause colleges to lower the cost of tuition to make up for the amount of students who will no longer be able to afford college because of the reduction in subsidies. In theory both of these plans make sense and seem like they could work. However in a capitalist society it is known that the best interest isn't about the overall good but about what works the best financially. The movement for college affordability targets everyone in our country who want a higher education and or a more educated country overall. Even more specifically it targets current college students, future college students, and parents of those college students. With this being said it has been a large democratic push as a talking point for this election cycle because there has not been a plan produced by republicans that gives a clear message on how college could be made more affordable, and how that could happen in the near future, rather just counter talking points on how there would have to be an increase in taxes to make the democratic plans work. The increase in cost of tuition can also be seen corresponding with the drop off in State Government funds to State schools and universities. This has also led the federal government to take a larger burden of the funding, which has increased the political interest of this issue.
In closing this is an important topic for not just my generation but future generations also. College education keeps becoming more and more necessary in our country to further progress in life economically. With the cost of tuition still rising nearly every year this is a problem that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. We need to look to our politicians for what plans they have and how they will tackle this issue especially with a new president being appointed in only a year. This is something that affects our country at nearly level and especially economically. There is almost always a correlation between education of a countries citizens and there economic capabilities especially in a democratic society. This is why I believe the campaign to reform the cost of college is an important one.
