P2 blog post: College cost

When thinking about what to write about for p2, nothing caught my eye as much as the articles about the ongoing increase in college cost for students across America. This included articles like Ethical Values: Economic Costs (EHE 107), UC Student Investment Proposal (EHE 117), Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi (EHE 123), and Higher Education: Not What It Used to Be (EHE 111). One of the many problems us students deal with today is the fact that they more than likely have to deal with crippling student debt way after they complete college. This is a huge problem not only because we are one of the few countries that still has this debt problem, but that students could be dealing with this for the rest of their life. I care deeply about this for a number of reasons. For one the fact that anyone should deal with this kind of debt in their lives is absolutely appalling. Secondly, if it wasn't obvious before, I myself am a college student that has to take out student loans to afford going to college. There are many possible solutions to the ongoing student debt crisis. We could lower the cost of college all together, but I imagine that it's a lot harder said than done. You'd have to deal with a lower value in the school in general, not to mention lower income for professors and other faculty. Another thing we can do to easy the student debt problem would be to work toward a "free" education system like in countries like Denmark. This way, our taxes would be used to better ourselves instead of wasting our money in other, less important affairs like war. Unfortunately, I don't believe this is happening anytime soon since this is seen as a "socialist" policy and our country is so afraid of that word that they won't even give it a second thought. One of the stake holders I could probably target are the people at the top of the school hierarchy or anyone who has direct authority on the situation, like the dean. This proposal is exigent for them because they're the ones who probably have the final say in the matter and I believe that they know what's going on and refuse to do anything about it. They are the logical audience because like I said, they're the ones who have the literal authority to implement any kind of reform to finally help stop the growing student debt crisis.