Cost Of College Essay

The cost of attending college over the last 40 years has skyrocketed. In the 1980s, the average cost of tuition and fees at a four-year public institution was around $3,000 per year. Today, the average cost is around $10,000 per year, a more than threefold increase. The trend is similar at private institutions, where the average cost of tuition and fees has increased from around $10,000 in the 1980s to more than $35,000 today. Not only has the cost gone up but the debt has gone right up with it. The average student graduates with $35,000 in debt compared to the $5,000 someone would have graduated with in the 80’s.

There are many causes for the increase in college prices. The first being the decrease in state funding going towards colleges.

This has created a cycle of sorts. As colleges compete to offer more and more student services, they cause the prices of college to increase and making it so less people go to colleges and the ones who do come from better to do families or eat the costs with loans. This lowers the number of students going and leads to the colleges creating even more student services which leads to less people and so on. Overall, this back and forth has been detrimental to students as they have acquired 1.7 trillion dollars (about $5,200 per person in the US) in debt with an average interest rate of

While it takes longer to get to where you want to be in life, college graduates do out earn those who choose to go to a trade school in the end and put themselves through less physical work to do so. A lot of trades job require you to stress your body each day. This leads to people working trades jobs to not work as long, to have more issues when it comes to their bodies, and to die on average 3.5 years earlier than people with college educations. This means that while people with trades jobs tend to be on schedule for life events, they burn out quicker than those with college