Blog Post #2: Jake Romano

For P2 I have chosen to focus on chapter 2 in the EHE “ Costs and Student Loans”. The articles that stood out to me and helped me pursue this issue were “The Path To Student Debt” Pg 155 By Virginia Tech and “ Higher Education: Not What it Used to Be.” Pg 111 by The Economist. I enjoyed the game board layout the author chose on The Path To Student Debt. The simplistic style stuck with me and made it easy to follow and understand the point they were trying to not home to everyone. The step by step process really Showed the actual process that many students have to follow and use for paying for college. It shows many of the was one can avoid debt via grants, work studies, FAFSA, and school aid. The article really attacked both sides of the problem here and showed the many opportunities that a student and their families take to avoid enormous debt. None less though it did show that in today’s world of higher education it is very hard to not leave a 4 year university without some form of debt.

Which then brings me to the second article “ Higher Education: Not What it Used to Be.” The article by The Economist hit home for me. It talked about how university degrees aren’t being valued as much as they were in past generations. What was also moving at least for me from this article was the last paragraph on pg 114. The article went on to talk about the debt for law students who had yet to find a job as a lawyer yet and having to deal with the immense amount of debt they had acquired from their studies. This moved me because I am a medical student and just like law students even before I am able to find work I will have racked up an immense debt of my own and it's very frighten to say the least. What if I don’t get a job as a ER Doctor… What if I have a useless degree and now I’m 300K in debt for the schooling I have gone through. What i’m trying to get at here is that yes university degrees are becoming more and more not what they are worth.

But with my proposal to Mr. Tony Frank I feel we can change that for good and work towards making college debt and useless degrees vanish. Being the the president of this fine university I feel he has the power to set forth what i’m proposing. With my proposal Students will substantially lower their student debt if they are willing to make the effort of 4 hard years or more of schooling and then paying it back to the university once they are done. Kind of like what happens in the military. The school will pay for your education then you will repay them with donations to better the school once you are gone. It is a win/win for both parties.