Overcoming Financial Barriers Of Going To College

1368 Words6 Pages

Going to college can change a person 's life: it helps them learn what they want to do and helps them get a job to be successful. The problem with college is that is keeps getting more and more expensive, it is currently more expensive than it has ever been. Because of this some families can’t afford to send their student to college, or some can’t afford to send all of their kids to college. Low class and middle class have a tough time paying for college. The middle class may have a slightly tougher time though. This is because most middle class families are “too poor for college, too rich for financial aid” as Robert Farrington put it in his article, (Farrington, 2014). College is so important in today’s society, in the article “Making College …show more content…

Another way to make college affordable for everyone would be to reduce the amount of time it takes to get a degree. According to “Making college Affordable: Five Ways to Overcome Financial Barriers to College” by Ann Coles, shortening the time it takes to get a degree can lead to the cost of college being reduced. (Coles, 2003). We could do this by offering more opportunities in high school to complete college credits, including dual-credit and AP courses. This is a good way to reduce the cost of college and to prepare high schoolers for college. Some schools have these opportunities, but not enough do, and even in the schools that offer these programs, they are not easily accessible. By getting credits in high school, students reduce the number of credits they need to graduate college, meaning they have to pay for a smaller amount of classes. If all students could get access to these college credit classes more students could get into college, and pay for it easily. This is a simple thing that could reduce the cost of college for students greatly. Another way to reduce the price of college is to give more need based loans and scholarships. Coles says that students who have the greatest need do not receive enough or any support for college. Many loans and scholarships that are given are merit-based, given to students who do well in high school, but may not actually need money to pay for college. If we can reduce these merit based loans we could increase the number of need-based loans and thus make college more affordable to the low-class families, who actually need help paying for