Rising Tuition - Rising Problems

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2011260737_studentstrike05m.html?syndication=rss&prmid=obinsite;
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget10/highlights/education.pdf

When traveling to places like Europe, most Europeans cannot even believe that we pay for our education in the first place. As if paying for it wasn't enough, we are now during a recession seeing unprecidented hikes in the rate of tuition. I stand at total agreement with one of the statements made in the article, simply put that"our view is that it has a negative impact on education and is counterproductive," Arkans said. In this, one would think that possibly the worst time to raise tuition is during a recession, especially with such dramatic hikes. First, many children who perhaps come from wealthy families but whose family will not help them pay for tuition will suffer the greatest. Second, those who already have trouble affording it will run into even more problems and possibly be priced out of schooling options.

Though I am no policy maker, I definitely believe that education in times like these need to be stressed. Education is imperative to help decrease unemployment rates and thus, stimulate the economy and consumer spending. Yet, none of this is even remotely possibly as students are burdened with hoards of debt after they graduate and simply focus on repaying their accruing debt as opposed to stimulating the economy, small business, etc. Whatever the proper solution is, we cannot turn youth off to the idea and support of strong educational systems. Personally, I believe that these policies are only giving way to a bundle of problems that will only grow in the future.

Another idea to help this situation is to perhaps cap university expansion. It seems as though today institutions are expanding just for the sake of expanding, however, expansions should really fluctuate based on demand rather than growth for growth. This seems to be a good way to keep universities competitive and possibly stabilizing tuition.