Taking a gap year during these hard times is a suboptimal solution many students have planned on taking in response to the increase in college tuition prices. Will colleges stay devoted to their students and help with their financial problems or will they have no solution, because during these times, every family needs help and there may be less resources available to fill in that gap?
As stated in the article, Smart Money Moves for College Students This Fall by Emma Kerr, a news reporter, “...college students have the opportunity to make a few smart money moves that may pay off in the uncharted months ahead.” With education now moving to an online platform and college tuition rising due to the unfortunate losses many of these universities experienced, students are being placed in a stressful predicament that not only can hurt their GPA’s, but also their pockets. Parents and students have been experiencing job losses. Staying at home has caused many things, like the light and gas bills to rise for many family homes. Right now, there are many worries about staying financially intact and seeking financial help from these colleges only results in the option of applying to more loans.
Students are taking it upon themselves to make decisions of their own in response to their education. For some, this comes at the price of sacrificing their college education for a year in order to avoid paying a tuition that is still at the price level of being an in person college based education. Others who come from a low economic background, intend to transfer to a less expensive college to save money this year. These students have been making sacrifices and finally earned a future where they can go to great schools and make their families proud, but the future is now filled with confusion, worry, and more sacrifices needed to be made. But, this shouldn’t come at the expense of needing to sacrifice one’s educational goals as mentioned in the article titled How to Bridge a Financial Aid Gap This Fall by Emma Kerr.
As a rising sophomore at UCLA, I can personally say that making these types of decisions are hard, especially when your original plan of attending a traditional 4 year college is now seeming impossible with the sudden prospect of tuition prices increasing. Currently I’m using the predicament many students have been placed in as an opportunity to learn about finances and possibly build a future for many other students like myself to do so. We all need to have background knowledge on finances, so we can be ready to combat financial issues that come into play. As a summer intern working for a financial literacy Non profit program called Building Blocks for Kids, I’ve been able to learn more about the corporate world, stocks, grant writing, and what it takes to build a non-profit. Learning about how to increase one’s finances all starts from highschool in order to be prepared for the world that awaits as a college student. I’m glad to be a part of a program whose sole mission is to help the students in regards to attaining college scholarships, internships and becoming financially literate. Right now, all we can do as students is continue to make sacrifices and intelligent financial decisions, but not at the expense of our futures. Building Blocks for Kids is one out of many programs that strives to build a student’s future, and right now, we need to continue to build, educate, stay informed, and dream.
Sources:
Follow up on my previous article Covid-19 Determining The Future of College Tuition