Summary Of The Cost Of College Yesterday Today And Tomorrow By Mike Patton

Mike Patton’s article The Cost of College: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow argues that the overall expenses involved in college education have been heavily inflating over the past few years and if we don’t help slow the accelerating pace, the economy could crash or collapse. I disagree with most of the points brought up in this article. Patton mentions that for the majority of the middle class who doesn’t bother to earn a scholarship or military benefits, “a student loan may be the only option” (Patton, 2015). However, I believe that with true dedication and perseverance towards one’s dream career, getting a scholarship is easier than one would think. Even if the student were to fail receiving a scholarship, other options are possible, such

Patton attempts to build his argument further by providing the current average costs of college tuitions, then reveals a line chart of the inflation over the past 20 years. In comparison with the $9,139 (in-state public) and $135,010 (private) tuition rates for the 2014-15 years, the author claims, “If education inflation continues to average 5.2%, the cost of tuition and fees for a four-year public university in 10 years will be between $65,590 (in-state public) and $224,124 (private),” (Patton, 2015). This claim seems outrageous and serious until you realize there are several errors in his calculations. Patton forgets that the value of the American dollar inflates by at least 2.3% at the same time that tuition prices increase by 5.2%, essentially dividing the intensity of this inflation by half. To add onto this, predicting the rates of inflation by an entire 10 years, which is half of the sample provided, is clearly extrapolation, thus making this calculation unreliable. However, his last point in the article is reasonable common

Lieber talks about an online game similar to Spent called Payback, both of which were developed by a company called McKinney. In the words of the author himself, “Payback marches players through a series of decisions, from which school to attend to when and how to accept paid work to whether to join (and pay for) a fraternity or sorority,” (Lieber, 2017). This game simulates real-world financial decisions and their long-term consequences, whether they be good or bad. This is extremely beneficial because it shows just how much little financial decisions can add up and enormously affect something, while at the same time not causing any real problems. Tim Ranzetta concludes based on his experiences that the main issue in this subject is that, “it came down to people wishing they’d known at the beginning how large their loan payment was going to be relative to their monthly income,” (Lieber, 2017). Ideally, people need to be educated from day one about how to calculate the real consequences of their decisions mathematically in order to save this nation’s economy. This game also allows the student to discover these issues on their own instead of being told by a teacher, which helps them learn from it better. On a personal note, Payback has helped me get a new outlook on how to plan my