We are Drowning in College Debt

Pay your way through college with DJ $. Photo Courtesy / Bill Cameron Pay your way through college with DJ $. Photo Courtesy / Bill Cameron
Pay your way through college with DJ $. Photo Courtesy / Bill Cameron
Pay your way through college with DJ $.
Photo Courtesy / Bill Cameron

By Rebecca Rue
Staff Writer

Something needs to be done about the exorbitant costs of higher education in the United States.

As a country, we push high school graduates to go to college, and to better themselves with a degree for the future. However, the cost of schooling has already become too high for most.

As time goes on, the deck is being stacked more and more against those that do not have access to expansive financial resources.

That is not what America is about, is it? In this country, anyone that has the ambition to expand their potential should be able to do so in whichever career they choose.

That is the American way, and that is what all of us wish for.

As a returning student, I have some experience with what the future looks like for unskilled and untrained workers.

With 9 years of retail experience under my belt back in 2012, I was making about $11 an hour full time.

To put that amount in perspective, my monthly earnings were not enough to even cover rent for an apartment in the East Stroudsburg area.

Since I paid for classes as I took them at my previous school, I was debt free when I came to East Stroudsburg University last semester.

Still, when I graduate, I will have accumulated at least $18,000 in debt, about $8,000 more than what my own father paid for his entire four year degree at a New Jersey College in the 1970s.

And that amount is low compared to what most will be facing.

What are we as a nation doing to the young adults who are just starting out and wish to carve a life for themselves?

“I took classes at a community college which luckily was free for me. FASFA covered those classes. When I got to ESU, that’s when the money started to build up. I’m about to graduate and I’m already starting to panic about paying the loans off. Let’s just hope I get a job soon,” said senior Amy Lukac.

There has to be a better way.

One that everyone in this nation can agree on that helps to ease the lives of all citizens, and that will help to ensure a continuing education for all.

Email Becca at:
rrue@live.esu.edu