Access to college
My name is Zachariah Lindsey, and I’m a student at Honokaa High School. The price to attend college is an issue that affects a lot of people.
Many students want to go to college but can’t afford to. Some students take out loans to attend college and then spend years after paying it back. Some parents refinance their house to put their child through college. Students need to go to college to get a decent-paying job.
Students could just not go to college and then not make as much as they would if they had gone to college. The average student will graduate with a degree that allows them to earn a higher income than they would have if they hadn’t gone to college. As a result, they pay more taxes to the government.
In the long run, the government would make money on taxes from people who attended college. Action is necessary, because it will make society better. … There may be very talented poor people out there whose talents we could be utilizing. There could be a poor genius out there that the world will not benefit from because they couldn’t afford to attend college to get recognized by the scientific community.
The solution would be to pay for people to attend college so they don’t have to pay while going. The government can put restrictions on paying for college. For example, if the student drops out, the government can ask the student to pay them back.
The government could spend less money on defense and put it toward students going to college. The national defense budget will be nearly $1 trillion during fiscal 2013. You can take half of that and pay for all students currently attending college, if they went to a four-year public college. That’s including tuition, room, board, books and fees.
Currently, there are 21.6 million people attending college. The average annual cost to attend a four-year public college is $22,300. That adds up to $481.68 billion, which is less then half of what the government is paying for defense.
If more people attend college, then they’ll get paid more, and there would be less people on welfare. So then you can take some money from welfare and pay for people to attend college. If more people get better-paying jobs, then they will pay more taxes. The more taxes the state gets, the more they can spend on paying for college.
Zachariah Lindsey
Honokaa
