How Much Do You Really Want to Go to College: College and the American Dream The American Dream is the ideal that everyone in the U.S. is presented with an equal opportunity for success, which can only be achieved through hard work and perseverance. In a modern perspective, the American Dream is represented by the opportunity to attend college and become a successful, contributing member of society. Every year, more than 20 million students apply to colleges in a desperate search of success for their future. According to a recent study presented by Tami Luhby in her article, “College Grads are Getting Nearly All the Jobs,” the relationship between a college education and success is very evident. Of over 12 million available jobs created after the Great Recession, 8.4 million were occupied by people owning a bachelor’s degree and 3 million jobs were given to those with an associate’s degree or some other form of college education. Through …show more content…
This dream, however, has become increasingly more difficult to achieve due to the significant climb of college tuition and the dramatic rise of standards that colleges have imposed on applicants. The fact that the price on college education has been steadily rising since the 1900s is not ground-breaking news to many. This substantial increase in college tuition has been creating difficult situations and challenging issues for accepted students, causing many to desperately turn to banks for student loans. According to Charles Kolb in his article, “College Costs and the American Dream,” college students take out loans in order to pay for part of their tuition and it “has grown to such an extent that [America] now [has] more than $1 trillion in student loan debt.” (Kolb). Because of the rising price of a college education, students must take out a massive loan in order to pay