Problems Facing Students Trying to Go to College (scholarships, Debt, Financial Aid)

A. Scholarships

1. Getting a scholarship means opportunity and happiness for the students who receive them; however, for the larger amount of students who don't, scholarships mean higher tuition prices. Colleges need to get the money for scholarships somewhere and they get it by raising tuition prices. So, what really is the price of a scholarship? If the use of the limited financial resources is in turn raising the price of education, is it really an efficient approach?

2. An article in the Washington Monthly reported, "In the last 25 years, the cost of private college has gone up at a rate twice as fast as the rise in household income.

3. Yes there are a plethora of scholarships out there to apply for, but the majorities are "minority-only." Brian Jones a member of the Department of Education said, "When you have a minority-only scholarship, you have said certain students, by virtue of nothing other than race, need not apply." Basically scholarships are only given to minorities and the fact of the matter is that with such high college prices nowadays many people could use the money. What happened to the diversity in education?

4. Today the students that wish to go to a private institution must either be basically classified as living at borderline Ethiopian poverty level to get a scholarship, or have incredibly wealthy parents involved in political office. What happens to middle class people who frankly can't afford this high cost of education?

5. The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is a large survey of college students to gather data on how they paid for school. It's conducted every 3-4 years by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) at the US Department of Education. It showed that for undergraduate students the average amount of scholarship funds given is $2,523.31, and that the percentage of them receiving scholarships is 5.5% out of 1,152,300 students.

B. Financial Aid

1. Financial aid started as a way to help poor families afford college. Today, financial aid has turned into a game to see which colleges can offer you the most. The problem with this is that with the rising price of tuition even colleges cant afford to keep up with such high prices. It is sad to say that today many colleges look at whether or not you can afford to pay in deciding your acceptance.

2. In 1988 the average family spent 22 percent of its annual income on college; it spends more than