In Zoe Mendelson’s Essay, “Paying for College”, she outlines some very important issues for the middle class and how expensive college payments are becoming for them. She says “Suggesting that all brilliant middle-class kids should just go to the schools they can afford undermines the meritocracy that we claim as a nation” (Mendelson). She is absolutely right. No student who has the mind to go great places should have to settle for a school that does not meet up to their needs. I’m not trying to say that most average-cost schools have average teachers, this is not necessarily true. Already at my college I have had teachers that could easily be prestigious top-school professors. But students that are the best need to be taught by the best and I’m assuming that these top schools have the most educated teachers imaginable to teach the next generation everything and more. A student’s income should not matter. It’s understandable that these top colleges need a lot of money to run things, but raising the tuition higher and higher each year is not going to help the students later on in life when they’re paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. These types of students need more support than is being given and being turned away by not fitting certain specifications isn’t fair. Everyone’s situation is different and a survey on a FAFSA form isn’t going to completely describe it. If students are denied financial aid but they still need it, they should be allowed to meet with the college to work something out. Every student should be given a chance to go to the college they want to go to, no matter their income. Humongous loans that suffocate a person later on are not the answer either.
“An annual college bill that exceeds the median household income, and an income level set too low for families like EG’s to qualify for aid, seem designed to exclude the middle class" (Mendelson). Mendelson points out a good issue on how middle class families are being excluded from getting the aid they need. As I said before, colleges need to meet with the many middle class students that need money to get into the education system. It says a lot about colleges when the lower class students are getting the aid they need but not another large group of students that makes up just about the same population as them. Lower class students deserve as much money as they need to get through college, and some of them may be left out too because of special cases. What I mean to say is that the middle class is left in the middle, not getting enough to get through college without debt and not poor enough to get the financial aid they need. Colleges are getting more and more expensive each year, almost at a rate that makes you ask, is it really necessary? Are all these costs for the students, or for the school in the long run? Are the colleges using the tuition to pay for salaries or for renovations and additions that could wait a few more years?
(I’m not bashing on the new science building here, I know it was outdated and was paid for by the state…)
Works Cited
1. Mendelson, Zoe. “Paying for College”. Los Angeles Times, 24 August, 2008
