College Tuition: an Ever Growing Problem

The future that we choose to have is based on an education system that continues to raise their costs, while the standard minimum wage has merely shot up a fraction in comparison. Most people would think “Eliminating tuition sound like a utopian good” (Kirp), but the thing about any utopian idea is that it always sounds too good to be true. Fortunately, some cities within our nation have already begun to help the process of free tuition, all in order to help eliminate the ever growing debt for college students.

Over the past few decades, the rise in tuition costs for colleges has grown substantially. Sine 1978 the cost of tuition has grown an enormous 183.312% in California, but the limits of honest working minimum wage employees have only seen a growth of 19.832%, which is an astounding 90% difference in financial growth. The growing financial instability that comes with going to college is a heavy burden for anyone to take. College is an amazing opportunity for where you can choose what kind of career path you want to take, although it does come with a heavy price. Currently, that cost in which the average college student has to dig a hole for himself in order to pursue their future career is 30,000. Although there is an outstanding debt of nearly 1.5 trillion in the U.S alone, we need to band together as a country and find a solution before this problem keeps snowballing and make matters even worse for the future generations to come.

The thought of free college tuition has crossed the minds of many people here in the U.S, some cities and states have gone so far as to execute these ideas. In the city college of San Francisco, “ Mayor Ed Lee announced an agreement to budget $5.4 million in tuition” (Hoover). This action has lead a movement for other states to follow such as Oregon, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Michigan. If communities were to band together, much like how the city of San Francisco did we could structure ways to grant free, if not so much as to limit the cost of tuition. In doing so we could help build a stronger community in which the financial gap between middle and upper-class wage workers would shorten significantly.

Works Cited

1. Dweck, Salim. 'Pro: Free College Tuition.' University Wire, 01 Sep 2019. sirsissuesresearcher, https://ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/login?url=https://explore-proquest-com.ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2325538386?accountid=40389.
2. Hoover, Amanda. 'San Francisco Will Offer Free College Tuition to Residents.' Christian Science Monitor, 07 Feb 2017. sirsissuesresearcher, https://ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/login?url=https://explore-proquest-com.ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2262647344?accountid=40389.
3. Kirp, David. 'Free College Tuition Will just make Matters Worse.' Los Angeles Times, 15 Nov 2019. sirsissuesresearcher, https://ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/login?url=https://explore-proquest-com.ezproxy.gwclib.nocccd.edu/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2316113379?accountid=40389.