Comment on Raising Tuition

Aaron Taylor Bonnette posted an article, Tuition Costs, on Friday July 25, 2014, on his blog called You may allgo to Hell, and I will go to Texas. He states that tuition is too high for kids from low income families and they need more aid to pay for the increasing cost of college. After reading I agree with him that tuition is very expensive. It is also extremely hard to pay for college for students that come from low income families. But instead of looking at education from an angle of paying it for it in full now and only getting 45,000 in your first job (if you find a job), I think education should, instead, be treated as an investment.  

If you look at the return on investment of education, then it is clear to see that paying even the full price (without aid or scholarships) is definitely worth the investment. New York Times says that getting a bachelor’s degree rather than just a high school degree will on average give you a profit of $500,000 over your working life. The gap has been getting bigger over the past few decades and will even get bigger for people with a degree compared to those without. So the $38,000 of debt will easily be paid off plus you will have $460,000 extra to spend. Even if you go to a private school, there is a huge return on investment. But I would not economically encourage people to go to private schools in general because studies show that there is no significant difference between the return on investment between state and private schools. So I say that people should get a degree at all costs. Yes, it is initially expensive. Yes, you might be unemployed or underemployed for a while. Yes, you will need to take out loans with interest. But in the end, all of that is worthy it.

But I do think that more financial aid is great. It would be great to give more money to kids that need it, but where does that money come from? That money would come from budget cuts in other areas of the total government budget (or the education budget), or the money would come from increased taxes. It is extremely hard to raise taxes because nobody wants an income tax or raised taxes in other areas. It is also hard to cut spending from anywhere in government because every sector has lobbyists keeping the money in their sector. And there has already been budget cuts in elementary and high schools, so there shouldn’t be even more cuts there. So I don’t think it is possible to give more money out in loans, even though it would be a great thing to do. Instead the student can somehow pay for it him/herself and get their money back later in life. It is completely possible to pay for a bachelor’s degree through current amounts of scholarships, financial aid, military funding, loans (some with higher interest than others), and many other payment options. So yes, everyone that does well enough in high school to get excepted into college deserves a college education, and it is possible to get for everyone even though it might seem like a financial burden at first.