On Monday December 1, 2014, CCRI Knight campus hosted a meeting of the Board of Education. One of the items on their agenda was the discussion of tuition fees and the idea of raising said fees. Edward Kdonian Copy Editor of The Unfiltered Lens was there to speak on behalf of the students against this motion. Read his speech below.
"How is it that the less money people have the more expensive the cost of education becomes? In 2005 the average household income was 55,000, in 2013 that number was 51,000. That is almost a ten percent drop. Yet tuition prices only rise as the American wallet gets thinner.
This trend seems even more disturbing when one considers that a degree is in fact worth less each year. 20 years ago a degree meant a good job. A fact that is no longer true. Where once a degree meant a career worth far more than the cost of your education, now it only means crippling debt.
How can you begin to justify charging more for an education, without also providing more for the cost? Perhaps before considering increasing the cost of attending CCRI you should consider adding bachelor programs in return.
According to the Huffington post, as of June 30th less than half of those who owe money for student loans were up to date on their payments. Each year the money spent on education becomes more of a burden on those who spend it. In the last year alone over 170 billion dollars in student loan payments have defaulted or gone unpaid on time, due to inability to afford them. More than 2 percent of those graduates are entering bankruptcy due to their overwhelming student loan debt.
USNEWS.com says that from 2003-2013 the price index of college tuitions grew an average of 79.5 percent. That is almost twice as fast as the cost of medical care, which grew only 43 percent, and almost four times faster than the cost of housing which grew only 22 percent in the same ten-year span.
17 percent of degree holders were completely unemployed in 2013. 17 percent of the people who spent thousands of dollars to get an education found themselves completely without means of supporting themselves with it.
According to the Washington post and the Federal Reserve Bank only 27 percent of graduates find a career matching their major. Of the remaining graduates less than 60 percent will find a career relating to their field at all. The rest will go unemployed or be forced to work in lower paying jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees, slowly accruing more an more debt as they desperately seek to find a job that will utilize their potential.
Forbes.com goes so far as to report that as of March 2014 44 percent of college graduates are underemployed, and 14 percent of graduates from 2013 were still without jobs.
So again I ask how it is that anyone can rationalize charging more money for an education that becomes less valuable every year? What allows the justification of charging youths, single parents, and people trying to better the course of their lives, more money for a college degree that is barely worth what it costs now, if in fact it is at all?
I don't know of a single other business outside education that increases the cost of its product as it becomes less valuable. If someone tried to charge you more for an apple or an orange as it become more an more rotten you would laugh in their face. If someone increased the price of beef infected by mad cow disease over that of healthy meat, you would walk away. Yet here we are smiling and nodding as over and over again institutions of learning raise the cost of a diploma that is worth a little less every year.
What message do we send to high school students as they consider going to college. How can we expect children preparing for their futures to choose higher learning when all they can see it getting them is more debt.
What kind of America will come about when higher learning is pushed to the wayside for workforce development? What will our country be like when higher thought and learning are pushed to the wayside in exchange for factory like output?
And as tuition increases will unsubsidized loans also increase? Will debt become more and more abundant and crippling? Will our country become filled with an uninformed unthinking workforce who's only skills include following directions? College isn't just about gaining skills for the workplace it is about becoming a whole person, a thinking person, a person capable of questioning the world around themselves and bettering it.
Pushing for certificate programs, or raising tuition only shows that intelligent thought is becoming less valuable to the college than the mechanical workers certificate programs create. The true value of school is not in a certificate that helps you get a job, but in learning to understand and question the world around you.
Say no to increased tuition and yes to student growth."
"How is it that the less money people have the more expensive the cost of education becomes? In 2005 the average household income was 55,000, in 2013 that number was 51,000. That is almost a ten percent drop. Yet tuition prices only rise as the American wallet gets thinner.
This trend seems even more disturbing when one considers that a degree is in fact worth less each year. 20 years ago a degree meant a good job. A fact that is no longer true. Where once a degree meant a career worth far more than the cost of your education, now it only means crippling debt.
How can you begin to justify charging more for an education, without also providing more for the cost? Perhaps before considering increasing the cost of attending CCRI you should consider adding bachelor programs in return.
According to the Huffington post, as of June 30th less than half of those who owe money for student loans were up to date on their payments. Each year the money spent on education becomes more of a burden on those who spend it. In the last year alone over 170 billion dollars in student loan payments have defaulted or gone unpaid on time, due to inability to afford them. More than 2 percent of those graduates are entering bankruptcy due to their overwhelming student loan debt.
USNEWS.com says that from 2003-2013 the price index of college tuitions grew an average of 79.5 percent. That is almost twice as fast as the cost of medical care, which grew only 43 percent, and almost four times faster than the cost of housing which grew only 22 percent in the same ten-year span.
17 percent of degree holders were completely unemployed in 2013. 17 percent of the people who spent thousands of dollars to get an education found themselves completely without means of supporting themselves with it.
According to the Washington post and the Federal Reserve Bank only 27 percent of graduates find a career matching their major. Of the remaining graduates less than 60 percent will find a career relating to their field at all. The rest will go unemployed or be forced to work in lower paying jobs that have nothing to do with their degrees, slowly accruing more an more debt as they desperately seek to find a job that will utilize their potential.
Forbes.com goes so far as to report that as of March 2014 44 percent of college graduates are underemployed, and 14 percent of graduates from 2013 were still without jobs.
So again I ask how it is that anyone can rationalize charging more money for an education that becomes less valuable every year? What allows the justification of charging youths, single parents, and people trying to better the course of their lives, more money for a college degree that is barely worth what it costs now, if in fact it is at all?
I don't know of a single other business outside education that increases the cost of its product as it becomes less valuable. If someone tried to charge you more for an apple or an orange as it become more an more rotten you would laugh in their face. If someone increased the price of beef infected by mad cow disease over that of healthy meat, you would walk away. Yet here we are smiling and nodding as over and over again institutions of learning raise the cost of a diploma that is worth a little less every year.
What message do we send to high school students as they consider going to college. How can we expect children preparing for their futures to choose higher learning when all they can see it getting them is more debt.
What kind of America will come about when higher learning is pushed to the wayside for workforce development? What will our country be like when higher thought and learning are pushed to the wayside in exchange for factory like output?
And as tuition increases will unsubsidized loans also increase? Will debt become more and more abundant and crippling? Will our country become filled with an uninformed unthinking workforce who's only skills include following directions? College isn't just about gaining skills for the workplace it is about becoming a whole person, a thinking person, a person capable of questioning the world around themselves and bettering it.
Pushing for certificate programs, or raising tuition only shows that intelligent thought is becoming less valuable to the college than the mechanical workers certificate programs create. The true value of school is not in a certificate that helps you get a job, but in learning to understand and question the world around you.
Say no to increased tuition and yes to student growth."