COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY
College affordability of National Interest: an editorial
October 03, 2007
Source: Burlington Free Press
Increasingly, a college education or its technical equivalent is becoming a must in order to secure a decent job. College is also a critical incubator for talent and innovation in a broad range of disciplines from art to science. Yet rising cost is threatening to put a college education beyond the means of even middle-class families without the help of mortgage-size loans. It makes no sense for a country to boast the finest colleges and universities in the world if only a select few can afford to attend.
At the University of Vermont, in-state tuition has gone up 48 percent in the past decade, room and board 52 percent and fees a whopping 288 percent, in a period when consumer prices rose by about 30 percent. The total bill for the current academic year comes to just over $20,000. Nationally, The Associated Press reported that college costs have nearly doubled in the past decade, and that total outstanding student loans rose from $38 billion in 1995 to $85 billion last year.
The AP also reports that, “Many in the next generation will be so debt-burdened they will have to delay home purchases, limit vacations, even eat out less to pay loans on time.” Here’s how that scenario could play out in Vermont.
The state is working to keep young graduates from leaving the state, and trying to lure back those who have left. The state has one of the oldest populations in the nations, and the lack of young people, especially highly educated workers, could hurt the economy. Yet graduates with hundreds of dollars in monthly payments on their college and graduate school loans would find it difficult to afford the state’s high housing costs on the lower-than-averages wages they would find in Vermont.
College affordability is, at its core, an economic issue, and a strong economy is a matter of national security. That should be reason enough to further boost aid. Vermont — and the nation — can’t risk letting a college education become unaffordable.
POSTED BY COLLEGIAN INTERNATIONAL, CHERRY HILL, NJ 856.679.4087 info@collegianinternational.com
YOUR SOURCE FOR HELPING FAMILIES FULFILL EDUCATIONAL ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR CHILDRENÂ WITH LESS STRESS AND FINANCIAL PAIN
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July 16, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Hi! My name is Becca and I work at Campus Progress, the youth outreach division of the Center for American Progress, here in Washington D.C. We just launched a campaign called “Students Over Banks” or “SOB” for short. We’re campaigning for more college affordability and we hope you can help us with a little bit of publicity. We know you have a lot of influence and we were wondering if you could share our promotional video for our campaign.
The video is located here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0lfNKGOf14
And our campaign website is here: http://www.studentsoverbanks.org
Thank you so much, we really want to get a lot of young people involved so all your help matters!