Congratulations to the class of 2012 and all the others beyond that. As MSU students, they have decided to embrace the world with courage after obtaining a degree that is supposed to be the key to a better life. Whether that degree was in Art History, Communications, Chemistry or Child Development their degree is supposed to make them $1 million more than a person with just a high school diploma.
Christina Strong
The struggle to stay in college is becoming larger. The federal Pell Grant, according to the San Jose Mercury News, has faced changes that will perhaps eliminate some students from college all together. The changes would deny Pell grants to those without a high school diploma or GED even though the student may have completed college coursework and reducing the eligibility of students to receive Pell Grants from nine years to six years cutting out students that need longer to graduate.
“For many people leaving college their loan payments will meet or exceed their mortgage. How can we consider ourselves successful because we have an education if we are to spend the rest of our live burden by the debt of our achievement? What has been achieved?”
This quote from Melissa Wright-Shall, a graduate student at Michigan State University, is a good way to sum up the problems with students graduating from college and owing excessive amounts of debt because they are constantly forced to take out more loans to pay for the increasing costs of higher education.
As a college student myself, my worries are the worries of fellow MSU classmates. We’re all hoping that once we graduate the economy will have improved. Ideally before we graduate we’d like to have a job lined up but at the very least only have to wait a couple months for a job after graduation.
After listening to others talk about their friends that had to drop out of college or their own struggles I decided that MSU students and students in the state of Michigan all seemed to have a similar story to tell. I decided to create a documentary with a team of MSU students called The Expense of Learning: a documentary about the rising cost of a college education.
The documentary profiles students from different universities across Michigan that are facing the very real possibility of either dropping out of college because they can no longer afford it or deferring after college decisions such as buying a house, going to graduate school or even getting married because the amount of loans they’ve acquired will require large amounts of monthly income to repay and an extended period of time.
The U.S. Consumer Price Index states that the cost of an education has risen an average rate of 4.5 to 7.5 percent annually since 1998.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics the average cost of tuition in 2000 was $10, 609 and in 2010 it was $14, 870 that’s an increase of $4,261 for a student in their freshman year that started paying the original $10,000 and than had to jump to $14,000 while still making minimum wage at $7.40 an hour. With steady increases like that year after year a student is bound to endure a little stress and maybe have their health suffer or their grades decline as they constantly worry or take on additional jobs to make ends meet.
The lack of employment opportunities in the state of Michigan also doesn’t add any hope to a continuously depressing outlook on life after college.
“The only thing I’m worried about is not finding a job. I’m not really worried about anything else,” said Lauren Spain a MSU 2012 graduate.
Mukonjay Barkons, a media and information major at MSU and a member of the class of 2013, worries what her life will look like once she walks across MSU’s stage.
“I hope to find a good-paying job that I can enjoy. I just worry about getting that job, that people with bachelors are having trouble finding.”
Ashley Banks, a journalism major at MSU said after graduation she plans on getting “a job out of state.”
College is an opportunity to expand the mind intellectually. To leave home and branch out on one’s won. To have the opportunity to meet people a person may never have had the opportunity to meet, if they opted to not go to college. It’s an opportunity to network and connect with resources that could help build a successful career. College can open many doors that without it may be closed. But if the trend of rising tuition costs and loan debts that students can’t afford remains the trend college itself may be a door that closes for many just like all the wonderful things after college that a student can no longer afford.
You can find out more about the documentary on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theexpenseoflearning or visit the website expenseoflearning.com
