College students everywhere are worrying about the increasing costs of attending college to receive a degree to help their future. Costs of tuition, living, and other expenses are constantly increasing, causing stress levels of many people to rise as well.

The average cost in 2011 for a four year institution was $22,000 per year.  Jerrie Hanson from Accounts Receivable at Morningside College informed me that the cost to attend this college increased four percent across the board. Those numbers can scare any student away from trying to achieve a degree that can be life changing, these numbers are increasing yearly.

With families in economic trouble college is one thing on the list of needs that could be erased.  This could harm many people’s lives though. In the working world these days a person needs a college education to receive a job.

Students in college are working to earn a degree to make a living once they have graduated college. This is a difficult situation because the job market is increasingly completive due to the combined effects of the recession and an ever increasing number of people that need jobs. To advance past certain levels of careers a college degree is necessary, but being thousands of dollars in debt just to try and get out of debt is a hard situation for many students.

Loans are haunting students everywhere and many people do not know how they will repay all the money borrowed to get an education. The major question here is that is four years of college worth being 20 years in debt.

Morningside college student Joe Tarpey says his worry about student debt is not obtaining a job with a high enough income to pay his loans starting six months after his graduation. Life comes with many expenses and those on top of student loans can require a large amount of money that could possibly be impossible to earn.  Joe explained his experiences saying, “College is all fun and games for some people, but they need to realize the large amount of money they are putting into a degree should not be taken for granted.”

There are a different number of solutions to this problem. Four year state colleges are already much cheaper than a private education and with government aid nobody at state college usually has to pay full price. Jerrie Hanson also said Morningside College offers award packages to students depending on your year at the college, your financial aid package, and grades.  She also said, “At this private college we have comparable prices to others, and the cost to attend the college does not turn students away.”

Another Morningsider, Erin Wissink, is working to become a nurse practitioner resulting in possibly seven years of higher education. She believes her job choice will eventually pay for the time and money put into her education, but finds it discouraging knowing that to receive a better job later in life she will have to spend $75,000 on her education.  Erin believes, “A cut in tuition prices will increase the number of high school students enrolling in college directly after graduation.”

After speaking to a couple college students the struggle in college is not just receiving a passing grade, but also finding college to be a good economical choice. College costs are ever increasing and many students and their families are concerned about these cost. This will be an important topic in the upcoming election and Americans will want to know what their leaders are going to do about it. The future of American education is changing and it should concern students because it will directly affect them for most of their lives.