My group decided to focus on the increase in college tuition for students. More specifically, we are exploring the controversy in what people believe should be the state of tuition; should it be left alone and continue to rise, or should we begin to cut the prices for students. As far as role assignments go, we decided to divide up the research by attributing each person to a framing question. This way we would research our individual element, and bring it together into one final script. Along the way of our research, we would also try to find appropriate media to incorporate into our videos.

My research revolved around finding the root cause of the increase in tuition and what the benefits would be if we were to look into lowering tuition. As far as researching the root cause, it presents a challenge. There are many sources as to why the tuition rates are increasing which include decreasing state support, increase in spendings per student, and more. The biggest issue through statistics is the decrease in support the schools receive. 46 states have decreased the funding they have made available to colleges and universities, and on average it is a 20% decrease per student. Regarding my research on the benefits to the opposite idea, lowering tuition, we can see that it can potentially benefit many parties involved with the controversy. Students can benefit from decreasing tuition as it opens the accessibility for many colleges for them. Furthermore, colleges are able to benefit from increased application sizes as well as admitted class sizes. Providing lower and consistent tuition rates also allows for colleges to attain a higher retention rate which often helps the economy of the college too.

This research was not too difficult to explore and analyze as many scholarly business and economics articles have touched upon this controversy on their own as well.