With inflation and the economic situation in the recent years, paying for college has become quite a burden for American families. Nowadays, education comes with a big price tag.
KATV reported that paying for college last year took an average of $19,548. Financial advisors speculate that that figure will continue to rise up every year. Moreover, there is already more than $1 trillion of student loan debt in the country.
"It was just expected honestly," Caitlyn Long, a recent graduate of Benton High School said. "I never thought about not going to college."
She will be going to the University of Central Arkansas, taking up marketing or public relations. "It's kind of stressful right now," she added.
Ms. Long is receiving support through scholarship money and grants. However, she still needs to take out student loans for a third of the whole cost.
"You hate to start out in debt when you go into the real world," her mother said. "We're always crunching numbers."
According to John Shrewsbury, managing partner with Genwealth Financial Advisors, college inflation rates are from 5 to 6 percent and normal inflation is 1 to 2 percent. Paying for college for an average four-year course would cost $10,000 a year nowadays.
Taking up a summer job can help but, whereas it would have been enough to pay for college before, now it's impractical to have it as the main source of income. TIME noted that the average full cost of a year of public college was $2,870 back in the early '80s.
The average today is already nearing $20,000 for a year. In order to pay this with a summer job, students would need to work for over 21 hours a day. To pay for it over a year, it would mean 37-hour weeks, every week.
Market Watch added that two additional years in college can cost $300,000 over a student's life. The calculation included tuition, student loans, lost income and missed retirement savings.
