Finalizing Background Research

As I began these weeks I knew that this would be the end of my background research on college and its costs. One of the many problems faced by colleges that I have overturned is the college dropouts. The main reason that this is a problem is that many people dropout of college when they are not prepared leading to a large debt for many states as well as the dropouts themselves. Over a five year period, it was recorded that "more than $9 billion dollars was spent by state and federal governments to support students at four-year colleges and universities who left school before their sophomore year" leading to a large debt for these governments as they now have no return on the investment ("College Dropouts Cost Cash-Strapped States Billions"). Along with this increase in the debts of the government, the students also find themselves in large debts that they are unable to payoff as they never received the degree allowing them to get a more profitable job to eliminate the debt. As a result it shows that many students need to rethink their plans before attending college as it may result in an insurmountable amount of meaningless debt for many. Following is a video from Fox Business (take it with a grain of salt) establishing the view on college dropouts. After watching leave a response on what your future plans are for after high school.

Source: The Friedman Foundation of Education Choice

Credit: Robert Enlow

Works Cited

College Dropouts Cost Cash-Strapped States Billions." American Institutes for Research RSS. N.p., n.d.  Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

Rise in Education, Rise in Cost

Furthering my study on college debt, I have begun to research the number of students within the various universities and colleges throughout the United States. My findings have led me to the fact that enrollment in these establishments has been on a rise as between the years of 2001 and 2011, the number of people that were enrolled at these establishments increased by 32 percent from 15.9 million to 21.0 million. This increase in enrollment was found to be even larger for full-time students as it had increased by 38 percent over the same span. However, with this increased enrollment, the tuition for each of has risen from on average a cost of $14,533 per year to $19,339 per year over that same time span yet not all this money is being put towards the education as a large portion of the money made from tuition is put towards marketing rather than the actual education. Occurring alongside these two factors is the fact that the graduation rate from college is only at 59 percent for four year degrees. This is causing a large debt increase for the 41 percent that do not graduate but still accumulate the debt by attending college and receiving no diploma to show their work. By doing this, they will find it much harder in the job market to obtain a job in order to pay off the debt that they acclimated for no evident gain. This problem has even reached national media attention as many news services are voicing concerns on the topic of college education and debt. Following this is from a video from The Late Night Show that has John Oliver discussing many issues with the current college education system.

Source: The Late Night Show

Credit: John Oliver