Issue date: 2/15/10 Section: Opinion

Higher education is virtually a must for a person to get a decent job in today's working world. With that, they need ways to pay for that higher level of education. Some students are fortunate enough that they earn one or more scholarships, rather athletic or academic, for outstanding work in high school. Unfortunately, I am one of those that were not that fortunate.

I, like so many other students, had to go through the process of taking out several loans to cover the costs of my college education. These loans are not grants or scholarships and therefore need to be paid back over time in full with an interest rate attached. This could be very stressful, especially if the student is struggling to find a job that pays enough to cover these expenses. Now, where do you look to find out why these students have to pay back so much money when they graduate, while others earn a free ride.

First, you must look at the university, is it public or private? A private university costs much more than a public one. Robert Morris University is a private institution, thus the cost is around $10,000 a semester. That is $20,000 a year, which in turn would be multiplied by four for a tradition undergraduate student, bringing the total cost to $80,000.

That is just the tuition rate; this doesn't cover other expenses, such as a dorm for a resident student or a nearby apartment. These costs are added to the tuition rate over approximately four years of study. This means that when once a student is handed a degree, there debt, if they had no grants or scholarships, would be over $100,000. That is a fact that makes them wonder, "How am I ever going to pay all that back?"

Most loans give the students a six-month grace period before they need to start loan repayments. That means that they have time to find a job in their field of study. That downside is, those six months will go by faster than anybody will realize, and then the student has no choice but to repay the loans. If they are just getting by at that point, repaying loans will make their life very difficult.

Then there is the question of if higher education should cost as much as it does. In the four years that I have been here, the tuition rate has increased all four of those years. I know that the increase is necessary every year for improvements and upgrades to various things at the university. $10,000 dollars is a large sum of money, and is it really necessary for universities to charge that much per semester? There is no simple answer to that question and it will leave students are their parents wondering for a long time to come.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools