The cost of a college education is one of the most hotly debated topics in higher education today. It is a complicated issue with no clear-cut solution to provide high quality, affordable college to everyone in America. Recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry called for Texas universities to come up with a plan to offer a $10,000 bachelor's degree. As you can see by reading the comments below that article, faculty have mixed opinions about the feasibility of offering a high quality education at a budget price.
College tuition in America has increased faster than inflation and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. This means that more and more students will require more and more financial aid to attend college. Last year, student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in America. Think about that for a minute. The average American has 3.5 credit cards, but only 29.5% of Americans over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher. Based on census data, the number of Americans with some college education but no degree and the number whose highest education is an associate's degree is just a little less than the number of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher. Undoubtedly, the cost of college must have had an impact on those who attended college, but never completed a bachelor's program.
For myself and several friends of mine, the cost of college threatened our ability to afford to complete our undergraduate degrees. For many of us, the problem stems from the faults of the FAFSA. In my case, the biggest flaw of the FAFSA is its lack of attention to whether or not family will help with the cost of attendance. The application assumes that parents will provide a certain amount of financial assistance to their child based on their current financial state as determined by their tax information. But what about the parents who do not support their child going to college or, even worse, do not want anything to do with the child at all? It is far too difficult to gain independent status for the purpose of the FAFSA. Basically, the student must be 24 years of age, married, a ward of the state, or have no living parents in order to be considered independent.
My parents, while financially capable, decided not to help me with college because "it's my degree and I should pay for it myself." I understand where this mentality comes from and do not hold any grudges against them. But even the maximum amount of undergraduate Stafford loans per year ($7500) doesn't come close to the cost of tuition alone at most public universities. I was willing to take out private student loans, but when my parents refused to cosign, my options to pay for college dwindled. Luckily I qualified for a high-interest loan with my wife (fiancee at the time) as a cosigner. I didn't qualify for a loan myself, despite having a high enough income, because the unstable nature of internships make banks a bit uncomfortable about my ability to repay. What scares me the most about the whole situation, however, is that if I had to stay just one more semester and my university continued to increase tuition by ~10%, I would've had to drop out.
My suggestion to fix the financial aid problem that causes so many of us to fall in the cracks is to offer some special assistance to students who have uncooperative parents. Even if this just means more loans, something needs to be made available. The FAFSA assumes every family is fully supportive of the child's college education. I would like to know where this utopia exists.
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