College is expensive, outrageously.
This is a fact that all students, current and prospective must face and deal with, some with their families, some without. Its just a fact of life now, in our world. And that is a given, part of the status quo now. But let's twist it a bit, make it more complicated, like my day yesterday.
I was a foster child, simple statement there, and because of this I expected to receive the CHAFEE grant, totaling $5000 of my college tuition paid for. That made it so I didn't have to take too much out in loans, that college would be affordable, even though I am attending a private liberal arts college on the East Coast. All the money I have earned for school is scholarship, grants and tiny sliver of loans, I'm putting myself through college like a lot of others have to do these days.
Then I get a call last night, informing me that myself, along with 15,000 other people who were approved for the grant back in April are not going to be receiving it. And while I am lucky enough to be a school that is simply going to freeze my account and let me stay enrolled until the money comes through, some will not be. That's a lot of money and for some schools a large amount is needed up front. Foster children already face enough difficulty and stigmatization in their life, add difficulties the first semester in college and some of them will give up altogether. Is this the message we want to send to the growing youth of our country?
I've been going back through news stories that have been published in California the last two weeks, something I have ceased to do since moving out to the East Coast and there is no mention of that. No mention about the tiny side effect of the budget committee being tied up and not passing the budget for the year until December. I get to work around it but how many others will not? Do we want to say, no you can't go to college, or here, take out this outrageous loan and then struggle the rest of your life to repay it when our economy is having issues with unemployment. How fair is this to our generation? I mean I know that we are suffering the political blacklash of the last few years and the present administration, but there has to be something we can do.
In my Modern World Lit class today we were discussing Heart of Darkness, and how even the glittering cities were once places of darkness, how the Romans conquered England and built the first part of London, which is now this great symbol of freedom, and beauty and strength. Only back in Joesph Conrad's time they were an Imperialistic country, doing to others what had been done to them. And countries that had once been great fall behind, London, England period, is though to be more refined and ahead of times then Rome, especially back in that era, yet Rome had once been the center of the world. We face this as well, we can't even afford to put ourselves through college yet we borrow more and more from the Chinese everyday.
Does anyone find it odd that the people who are keeping our economy running, who is funding the war we currently fight are people we disapprove of? Bush nearly boycotted the Olympics yet its perfectly fine for us to take their money. And they were once the most advanced countries in the world, way back centuries ago, well what goes up must come down and vice versa. It seems like we are now on the opposite end of that spectrum. I'm not saying this will happen, in fact these were my professors words "we could end up going to work for them, becoming a third world country and they a new superpower". It happens all the times, usually in conjunction with a war.
Russia and the US emerged as super powers out of WWII, thus came the Cold War, only to end when Russia came under better leadership, but then the communists there fell. Our government and our position on the global world can do the same thing that Russia had happened, as England had happen after the first World War. Think about it, really, just think about what costs of education and people not being able to work or get higher education could do to our country. We need change, badly....