Student voices: Growth of college debt scary

Talk about it

The trend of rising student debt has been in the news lately more than ever. Perhaps I am taking greater notice of the issue as well, as I am beginning to decide which college to attend in the coming months. But with the cost of tuition rising, the increase in debt is definitely logical.

I have no idea where all the tuition money is spent, but that doesn’t really matter. It is clear that people are willing to pay whatever it takes to go to college, because the alternative eventually will leave you worse off. In other words, the cost of not attending college is higher than the student loans that add up.

I have realized that no matter where I go to college, obtaining some student debt is virtually inevitable now. But I accept this, and I plan on making an informed decision on where to attend college based on what I can afford. Just as I come to terms with this, however, there is a news report about rising student debt and an article on the increasing cost of college. And, of course, speculation about the actual worth of a college degree and whether it even pays off.

Going through almost 13 years of school, college was always the goal. And yes, the cost of college is obviously increasing at a rapid pace. But these news reports are so incredibly discouraging and perplexing—on one hand, I am told how important it is to have a college degree in order to find success. On the other hand, I am now being told that college students are entering an endless road of debt.

I already knew all of this—again, college is expensive. I don’t just want to attend college, I have to. But what I find most discouraging is that these statistics are shared through the news, yet nobody really seems to do anything about it.

The misfortune that my generation has to face with paying $40,000 a year for an education is basically sensationalized by the media. There doesn’t really seem to be any solution for this problem in the future, so the news coverage this issue gets seems like a taunt to my generation when there is nothing else we can do in our quest for a quality education.

Student debt is something I am about to get extremely familiar with, and is an aspect of my future I cannot completely avoid. I just wish that with all the coverage this issue gets by the media, someone takes action and creates a solution for this growing issue. If not, it will just continue to make people like me question whether or not I should even attend college, when I have been working my entire life to get to that point.

Marnie Sciamanda is a student at Rosemount High School

Tags: high school, opinion, rosemount, commentaries