Higher Education Essay -- College University Money Knowledge Essays

Higher Education A college education. Many parents and even parents-to-be are bombarded with this goal, sometimes before their child is even born. How will they save? What is the best way to save? How much should they save? Magazines for new parents deal with this issue on a regular basis. Parents are warned in American Baby, "Start early...Eighteen years from now...a college education will cost close to $85,000 at a public university and just over $200,000 at a private institution." Parents are also advised to save around $115-284 a month from their child's birth. Another issue of American Baby suggests that parents "Start saving as soon as you can, and put money in regularly." These magazines work on the assumption that parents will be sending their children to college. It is just a given. Why is it just understood that we will be sending the next generation to college? What has changed so much since the days when only the wealthy (and male) went to college? Today a college education is available to many more people, with the availability of grants and Stafford (guaranteed student) loans, given they have the desire, some level of intelligence, and often a willingness to go into debt for their education. According to www.house.gov, "Over the last 15 years, the cost of a public 4-year college education has increased by 234%. In comparison, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 74% and family incomes have risen only 82%." They also state that "The price of a college education has increased two to three times the rate of inflation since the early 1980's." The Global Institute, at www.edgorg.com, says that today there exists a "growing difficulty of moderate income families to pay for college" with st... ...order to get better jobs and earn more money, to get to the good life, yet influenced by what colleges want them to learn and what employers want them to know: these all may or may not be the same thing. What employers want out of college graduates is also based on money: who can do the job the fastest and best, who can save or make money for the business. What is clear is that the university or college which is purely a "meeting of the minds," a place for people to gather and learn for the sake of learning, seems to be becoming a thing of the past. It is being replaced by an increasingly commercialized system of higher education: one that costs more and more each year--with the cost rising much faster than the rate of household incomes, and one that is being altered by the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and the needs of the business world.