Damn bro, I feel your pain... It reminds me of this one time where I was angered because people said that the youth of this generation are spoiled because they are protesting the cost of a public education. Tuition fees are rising, quickly, and will soon be 100-200% what they were before. It now cost $13,000 to go to school at the University of California, while in 2005 it cost around $5,000. Next year, it will cost $15,000 to attend school there. Naturally, those most affected, the students, are up in arms about the increases, but the general consensus seems to be against the interests of the students. Every time I read a story regarding these increases, the feedback from the public is usually about how spoiled these people act and how they should learn to work for their education. I guarantee that many would be willing to do that, but it would be an impossibility to afford tuition all by yourself.
Th cost of attending school, including books, tuition and housing, is somewhere close to $25,000. To everyone calling the students lazy, how is someone supposed to work enough to earn $25,000. That salary of a fast food worker averages to about $14,000 a year, working full time, not taking into account being a student. How is someone supposed to earn $25,000 on a high school education. It's a bit of a Catch-22. Perhaps working and paying for school may have been a realistic option some years ago, but with the recent tuition increases, that no longer seems to be the case. I constantly see people talk about how they were able to pay for their school all by themselves. Why shouldn't the youth of today be able to do that? I think they aren't taking into account the massive increase in tuition over the corse of the years.
Students aren't asking for free rides. They're merely asking for tuition to be reasonable. "Poor" students are offered grants that may in fact cover their entire tuition, while those wealthy enough to afford tuition don't have to complain. However, this leaves students who are wealthy, but aren't poor enough to qualify for government aid. What do we do? I have ten of thousands of dollars out in loans and I have no idea how I will pay for them. Thanks God my parents have jobs, or I wouldn't be able to afford school.
There's people who argue that education isn't a right and those who think everyone should have access to education are snobs. Well, do people really want less people to be educated? America is slowly slipping off as one of the most educated countries, despite the fact that we have some of the best universities in the world (both public and private). Are we naively going to suggest that if you weren't born into an upper middle class family, you shouldn't be educated. It angers me how most people believe this generation are lazy, spoiled brats, when they were born into impossible conditions.
Thats what I think...