Insane Amount of Debt & President Obama’s Speech

1. Both articles are responses to the President Obama.  How do you respond to the idea of a “Race to the Top” competition (mentioned in the Joy Resmovits blog) and the request of “Please don’t rush it” in the Robert J. Sternberg letter?
2. Does one article seem to have a more political slant than the other?  How?  Does it matter?
3. As a college student who is paying tuition, how do you feel about the proposal and the responses to it?

Links to articles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/27/obama-to-target-rising-co_0_n_1236167.html?view=screen

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/30/open-letter-president-obama-his-plans-deal-tuition-increases

1. In truth, I just think college students are screwed either way. I mean let’s face it, how the heck will the government grant billions or even millions of dollars to colleges. I like his idea of lowering tuition cost for upcoming and current college students, but I have to agree with Sternberg. Lowering tuition cost doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good thing because schools aren’t receiving enough funds from the state to enable them to keep the tuition cost at an affordable price. Besides if they didn’t keep the price they have now, there’s no way they can afford paying the professors at the college. I must admit, his plan seems great considering that it will benefit kids like me and the kids after me. However, it just put the graduate students of this year through hell. I mean they can’t do anything about it, they won’t get the money they need to pay off the huge debt they have. But then again, as mentioned in the Huffington Post, President Obama did say if schools didn’t lower their tuition costs then they won’t receive funds from taxpayers which usually their money goes to Pell grants and state grants. Which means, no cheap tuition = no college funds = no grant money for students. Basically, it’s a catch-22 either way you move you’re going to hit a dead end. As mentioned before, COLLEGE STUDENTS ARE DOOMED! I have a better chance of surviving married to a farmer and farming for the rest of my life instead of spending ridiculous amount of money on more years of schooling and figuring out that I’m going to be in debt for many years of my life.

2. I don’t really care which one sounds more politically slanted than the other article, because to me they both say the same thing. This plan is going to get a big NAY from majority of the Congressmen/women and not a lot of people really like the plan.

3. With all due respect, I like some parts of the proposal but I feel that it needs to be modified a little more before being passed as law/regulation. I dreamed a future where college is affordable without removing grants and scholarships. Let’s hope that the dream will come true one day. What really sucks is that if we want lower tuition we as taxpayers would need to pay more taxes to fund the colleges which they will distribute the adequate amount of grant/scholarships to the students. But, yet that would bring us to the big argument of forcing all three social classes to pull more money out of their pocket which 2 of the classes can’t afford to lose. Which then makes everyone turn to the top/upper class (the wealthy, filthy rich people aka today’s aristocrats). Thus, reopening the debate of whether the upper class should pay higher taxes to cut the lower and middle class some slack (WHICH I AM ALL FOR! Sorry rich people but if you can throw millions of dollars to buy more cars than one can drive, tons of houses you barely even live in, and God knows what else you do with that money, you can definitely pay 3% higher taxes).