It’s that time of year again.
No, I’m not talking about flu season. Although seriously, these residence halls have been turning into actual infirmaries with all the sick people dragging themselves around these past few weeks.
I’m talking about the yearly chat about rising tuition in colleges and universities across the country. If you haven’t heard, tuition rates are once again expected to increase across the nation in 2020.
Of course, this isn’t anything new. According to figures collected by U.S. News, in-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have grown exponentially, increasing by 221% in the past 20 years.
I don’t know about everyone else here at Ferris, but I sure as hell can’t afford these constant increases in tuition. Heck, my bank account is already lingering into the red, which is unfortunately better than a good amount of people here at Ferris.
I’m not going to be the person who goes in-depth about how wages need to be raised parallel to the raises in tuition costs. I feel that’s a discussion for another day. The point that I feel gets overlooked in this argument is the morality of pushing people into piles of debt they’ll never be able to work themselves out of.
Who decided to make college into a place where we’d have people pushed to their fiscal breaking point? Who decided that this is how people should prove to others they’re ready for careers in their adult lives?
Ignore the fact that college is stupid expensive for no apparent reason. If Ferris doesn’t value the professors enough to pay them what they’re worth without a strike, then why should students pay the university thousands of dollars to learn from those same professors?
But let’s be real. College is certainly not the only expense people who attend have in their lives. Currently, I’m drowning in hospital bills, phone payments and numerous other expenses to help keep my family afloat. But of course, if those things get brought up, you’ll always have those people who give you the financial aid argument.
Newsflash: financial aid doesn’t solve all the money problems for college students, and if tuition prices continue to rise, then it never will.
Of course, none of that matters. As long as colleges and universities continue to turn a profit, this moral dilemma won’t exist for them and these trends will continue as they have for the past 20 years.
Imagine more, folks.