Taking the Blame for the Money Game
Tuition costs in colleges continue to rise even in the midst of this disastrous recession. Colleges don’t seem to be phased by the growing number of students who are graduating from their institutions with massive loads of debt under their arms. This isn’t surprising though. Their business is much less about the transaction of knowledge and more about the accumulation of wealth and prestige. But, maybe this is too harsh of a claim. Perhaps they do aspire to bestow education unto its students. Perhaps the problem is simply the price itself.
Tuition prices refuse to ebb and flow with the fluctuation of affordability. Education comes at a high price and for many it has become as burdening as not having a diploma at all. Do institutions care if their graduate offerings aren’t worth their weight in this new economy? As long as the stigma perpetuates that a degree is the most important thing for job seekers, colleges will continue to exploit it by over-charging. Their students in turn finish school with debt that will take some of them a lifetime to pay off.
So who is to blame for such irresponsibility? The colleges for charging so much, or the students for accumulating high loan debts in order to pay for these tuitions? As Ron Lieber explains in his article, Placing the Blame as Students Are Buried in Debt, “no one forces borrowers to take out these loans” but also contends, “perhaps the biggest share lies with colleges and universities because they have the most knowledge of the financial aid process. And I would argue that they had an obligation to counsel students…” Lieber points out both sides with good reason. Students know very well what they are getting into as much as the universities do.
Of course, a revolution in thought isn’t an easy one to come by. As long as employers still look highly on college graduates then the commodity of college degrees will be in high demand and prices will inflate because they can and students will pay it. These days this catch-22 that pervades our nation is reaching points of absurdity as students reach over hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Even with their better jobs they are either barely scraping by or breaking even in an attempt to pay off their bills.
Responsibility is always a balancing act, though. As much as universities need to be more responsible with the product they sell, students need to be more cautious as consumers. It seems that even in the financial aspect of education that responsibility plays a crucial part. Maybe it goes even deeper than Martin Luther King Jr. could have imagined. Just as students have a personal responsibility to respect their academia by questioning all that they learn and applying it, they must also question their motives and actions to get to that school in the first place. A good career plan means asking questions not just in the aftermath, but in the prelude as well. Colleges aren’t going to have a heart and stop pushing for higher tuitions so it’s up to the students to do it. They must take responsibility and ask, “should I go to this college? Is it worth it in the long run?” Or, quite simply, “can I afford this?”