“When I was in college, I lost my scholarship

one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I camped in the hills.”

–Robert Hass

Education is a right of every child, no matter their race, socio-economic background or culture. Everyday children graduate with the highest of honours and great expectations of getting higher education that would advance their position in society. They are also told of the thousands of scholarships and aid offered but little do they know of the reality of this sector of a country.

As time progresses the budget allocation for the education sector in most of Asia and countries like the US and UK keeps shrinking. As a result, the institutions are then forced to raise college tuition, an estimate of 5 percent annually. Harvard’s annual tuition would send back students 45,278 dollars which is almost 17 times the cost of education there in 1971. The insistence of offering various college loans by universities all over the world is another problem for the students; it traps them in a vicious cycle where, because of the increasing necessity for higher education to survive in today’s crippling economy along with the growing ambitions of the children, they are burdened with the responsibility of paying the loans off with the additional cost of the interest rates that are applied monthly. Many are at a major disadvantage in the society and often a major portion of their salaries goes into paying off debt.

The institutions have come to a stage where it seems that they are compensating for the lack of budget by charging higher tuitions but because of a change in their basic priority, the responsibility to provide education, they seem to look for their interests at the expense of the quality of the education and college experience given.

In the modern world, when higher education is a necessity, college tuition makes it impossible for the masses to attend college thus altering the entire course of their life. Such an important service should be regulated and controlled at the highest priority.