Students across America are struggling to participate in education courses across the states. Without appropriate funding, these people will be forced to either collect the money themselves or abandon all hope of taking college courses.
Why Not Obtain The Funds Through Hard Work?
In America’s economy today most are faced with one of two major problems: either they cannot obtain a job with their current education or they have obtained a job and are living pay check to pay check. With the minute amount of money that most young adults make through part time jobs at Wal-mart, or even full time jobs at the Tech Center, and the costs of housing, food, and transportation, it would be a harsh challenge to obtain enough funds to further educate themselves with what students know before college. When one trades their time for money, there are only so many hours in a day, they must learn to excel in their field to increase their income.
Wouldn’t GPA requirements weed out students who would quit, fail, and otherwise waste both time and money?
Not necessarily. By having a Grade Point Average Requirement, unless it is such a low requirement that it would be irrelevant, the responsible end of the student populace would be less inclined to take out a loan because those who are extremely intelligent and do have a high GPA would be concerned about having an off year and would thereby try other ways of paying for the classes directly (i.e. saving for them and creating safety nets through relatives) instead of using the loans alltogether. This would leave only the people who are irresponsible to attempt to take out loans.
Irresponsible pupils who get good grades are equally as prone to quitting school and refusing to pay back loans as students who have poorer grades. Not because they weren’t doing well memorizing the information, but because they just didn’t want to do it anymore and have no sense of dedication to their responsibilities.
So how, then, can we prevent our money from being wasted on the students who will quit?
I believe that if 1-3 financial classes were required (or offered) for every loan, it would increase the likelihood that students would pay back their debts later in life. There are hundreds of books on the subject of finance, but it’s never been taught in schools. So my personal recommendation would be to teach how to live on less than an individual receives and how to pay money back in increments based on the leftover funds from your paychecks. It is impossible to default on a school loan… so it’s exceedingly important that students understand the importance of paying back their debts, but also, how to do so.