A final problem facing US colleges for this blog, but most certainly not the final issue facing the system. And yet, we soldier on into this final blog post.

Yes, you guessed it. The college admissions scandal. This made national news for weeks because of how far and wide the scandal spread. But this wasn’t just an issue when these celebrities’ children were caught. Bending admissions rules for children from wealthy families or school districts has always been a pattern.

Wealthy families with connections to admissions departments or the ability to make large donations have always had an easier time getting their children into college. That is just a fact.

However, it’s not only familial connections or wealth to spare. It’s background. It’s been proven that students from less than ideal backgrounds and poverty stricken neighborhoods have a harder time getting admitted to certain universities. I can speak from experience, considering no more than, and rarely even, 5 kids each year get accepted to Penn State main campus, a prestigious acceptance where I’m from, even with stellar grades, each year. However, many of my friends from wealthier areas and parts of the country view Penn State, the main campus, as a safety net; a backup school. If Penn State was considered my back up school, senior year would’ve been a lot less nerve wracking.

What I’m saying is that the news of the college admissions scandal rocked the nation and had everyone wondering how many more celebrities had done this that we weren’t aware of. They failed to recognize that this happens inadvertently EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

Kids are judged by background, or by the APs they didn’t take (because none were offered), or by their peers’ applications. But not by their own merits. Why is that?

Others have no problem or concern about getting into a prestigious school like Penn State’s main campus. They don’t realize that Penn State had 90,000 first year applicants for the class of 2023 and accepted 7,500 of those to main campus.

It’s a blessing that they have those opportunities, and it’s only right. But we need to make sure the opportunities are equal and fair for everyone. We need to make sure that they aren’t judged by wealth or district.

It’s simply not right. And we need a change in the wake of the admissions scandal. But not just for celebrities. For everyone.

So, my blog thread kinda worked out in terms of current events with colleges and the current state of the country due to the coronavirus.

I feel a little defeated right now, to be honest, but I guess we’ll delve into this despite all of that.

There’s a lot of problems facing the world with the emergence of this particular disease, but one affecting the largest amount of people is the cancellations of schools and colleges. Kids are being homeschooled by their parents, public schools are operating on a snow day basis, and college students are essentially doing their classes by FaceTime and having essays upon essays piled onto their workload to account for the lost time and shift in curriculum. It’s certainly a disconcerting change, to say the least.

What does this mean? I don’t think even college boards or school boards know the answer to that either. How are graduations going to be held now? Are kids going to have a graduation held on Zoom? Are they going to have everything they worked for reduced to receiving a diploma in the mail? Are they going into the world to begin their real adult lives without the ceremony that creates the feeling that this chapter of their lives has ended?

Or what about the college freshmen, who may have been beginning to like their second semester at school after a rough adjustment period during their first semester? Will they now feel like they need to transfer, and never give the college a real chance? What about all of the new members of sororities and fraternities who won’t get their real initiation to feel like a real sister? What about the high school seniors and freshmen who won’t get to tour their top schools or go to their accepted students days? My accepted students day at Penn State was life-changing. I felt like I belonged. I pity anyone who doesn’t get to experience that feeling.

What about the parents who have to learn how to settle their 4-year-olds long enough to do their work of counting and coloring (which I actually was the one to do today while babysitting)? What about all of these people?

The worst part is, we can’t be upset, really. It’s for our protection, for our families protection, our friends and the people who can tell us the history the rest of us are too young to remember. My immunocompromised pregnant sister is someone who’s at risk, and my dad with diabetes and high blood pressure, and my mom on blood thinners with high blood pressure, and my 74-year-old grandmother. We need these unfortunate displacements of our lives so that the people close to us can survive. We will make it through Zoom University, but if we don’t do this, those people won’t. That’s why those problems need to be dealt with, and it’s a sucky tradeoff, but it’s necessary.

So, this week’s problem facing the higher education system in America is the issue of sexual assault on college campuses.

Even though college campus sexual assaults aren’t very high per number of students, the amount of unreported and off campus assaults do not get added into crime statistic reports. Every once in a while, I will receive a crime alert from Penn State to my phone about a crime on campus, and most commonly– it’s been sexual assault.

Most disturbingly, one at the beginning of this semester was a sexual assault by four members of a fraternity on one victim. It scared me. I don’t even understand dhow that’s possible in a way. Obviously, I do, but it’s so disturbing I wish that I didn’t in a way.

I think the bigger problem is that it’s fairly well-known that when an athlete commits a sexual assault on a college campus, maybe not at Penn State, but as a promising college athlete, they typically have their wrongdoings swept under their rug to protect not only the university or college’s reputation, but to keep their sports teams at the top.

I don’t want to focus in on athletes, because I don’t want to make generalizations. However, I think that colleges sweeping things under the rug is the big problem. For example, the sweeping under the rug of the Larry Nassar abuse of gymnasts from across the globe at Michigan State University’s campus. The university was told about the abuse plant of times from 1994 up until Larry Nassar was convicted and never once did they do anything to fix or correct the situation that they knew was going on for years.

All colleges have been guilty, I’m sure, of sweeping sexual assault under the rug or ignoring it all together. Women, the most common victims, are asked what they were wearing, did they drink, how much did they drink, did they make any move toward the assaulter, was there any reason the assaulter would believe that it was what they wanted, and did they ask for it?

No matter what I did, I did not deserve it. I don’t care what any one of the victims did, they don’t deserve it. I will never deserve it. I will NEVER have asked for it. Let me say again, I WILL NEVER HAVE ASKED FOR IT.

College campuses should be required to report any sexual assault and abuses within a certain mile radius of the campus. It’s clear that rapes and assaults happen every day, and I’m sure they happen off campus in the hundreds of apartments that Penn State students reside in. I’d like to believe it doesn’t happen much at the school I go to, but I know how the real world works, and I know the statistics of the amount of people that are sexually assaulted every day. Penn State does not have to report or does not have a reporting system for any of the apartments where students reside off campus.

It’s never asked for. It’s never deserved. The reporting needs to improve and get a better statistic system in place. It’s never asked for.

Okay, the title is a little hyperbolic, I just thought it sounded good.

However, that aside, this post is about the college dropout rate in America. In general, 30% of first-year students will drop out from their chosen college. Another study also found that 51% of college students dropped out because of financial issues. These numbers are staggeringly higher for students who are the first in their family to attend college (89% dropout rate).

What do these all mean? Well, I don’t know, it’s not my field. What I do know, is that this is an issue close to me and it scares me, a lot. This is close to me because my oldest sister, Colleen, dropped out of Temple University.

I’ve watched this weigh on her a lot. She is eight years older than me, so it’s been about 10 years since she felt she couldn’t do it, or whatever her motivation was. The funny thing is that, in Colleen’s case, she doesn’t talk about what it felt like, or why she did it, or any of the other thousands of questions you can ask someone who drops out of college. I don’t think I’d want to talk about it either. It feels like something America makes you feel ashamed of. I don’t think there’s a reason to feel ashamed, though. I understand the idea of the shame of dropping out., especially considering that there is a mentality that a college degree is the only way to be successful or get anywhere in life.

THIS ISN’T TRUE.

With my sister’s loans, my first gripe with the higher education system, she ends up living a life of few extras or many wants without my parent’s help. However, had she not had to sign up for a life of debt to enter college, she would be making a considerable earning with her salary without a college degree. College degrees don’t mean the only path to success, and my sister has shown you can get a good and decent paying job without a college degree. The problem is that somebody shouldn’t have to.

How can this be fixed? Honestly, I’m sure there’s a lot of people with a lot of solutions a lot better than mine. So I’m not sure how one would fix this issue. I think considering the statistic of income based dropouts, significant drops in loan requirements and college costs would probably alleviate some of the stress on these students. I know it would alleviate my stress of wondering whether I’ll be able to come back next year. But, these problems don’t fully account for all of the dropouts, so what accounts for the rest?

Well, I think a big part of college dropout numbers is that perhaps some people aren’t made for the college formula. Classes everyday, and intense pressure to succeed, and most definitely piles of work and exams on top of each other from every class is most definitely not for everyone. It’s really not the forte or favorite activity of most people, as far as I know. So maybe, to avoid college dropouts, there could be an imposition of workload limits to alleviate stress of these students with 4 exams in one day and 200+ pages of reading.

College dropouts can be avoided by a number of programs, I’m sure, but alleviating immense stress loaded on the shoulders of teenagers and young adults is a great place to start.

So, I went through a few ideas for this blog topic, and settled on climate change.

Well, then I settled on ageism in America.

FINALLY, I settled on where I am, college policies in America versus the rest of the world.

“Is it really that different?” Well, excuse my language, but HELL YES. It’s ridiculously different.

For one thing, the college tuition system is only life crushing commitment to debt in America. I have a lot of problems, but that is most definitely my biggest one. The worst part is that one of the most debated topics on the campaign trail at the moment in the U.S. is ‘free college.’

I don’t think college needs to be free, by any means. It’s expensive to run a college, I know that. But, putting 18 year olds $90,000 or more in debt before their life has even started is just completely life ruining and dream crushing.

I don’t want to talk badly about Penn State, but it was one of the least expensive schools I applied to. Now, my in state tuition and housing costs come to around $24,000 a year. Anyone out of Pennsylvania is around $40,000. So, for an average, 4 years of tuition at $32,000 (between 24 and 40) for 40,000 students (this doesn’t even account for branch campus tuition), Penn State makes $5,120,000,000 every four years on average from University Park alone. This definitely isn’t exact math but it makes my point. Five BILLION, 120 MILLION dollars. This doesn’t include textbooks, sports ticket sales both student and otherwise, any type of licensed clothing sales, parking spots, both student and football or sports parking, or any other external costs. With these, I would estimate that Penn State as a brand and school has to be making about 6 billion or more within a 4 year span. We get really great amenities and it’s beautiful, but $5,120,000,000 for this campus is not right.

A lot of people want free tuition, but I don’t need free. I just want affordable. That’s all. In France, they pay around $700 USD for textbooks, education, and housing. I think that would be a valid amount. Even if tuition was $2000 a year, that’s still 320 million for University Park alone. Loans would still be necessary for some, but the fact is that this could be payed off a whole lot easier than the $96,000 I will have in loans as of now. My life will never exist from here on out without the burden of crushing debt in the back of my mind weighing me down.

It’s simply not right that we do this to teenagers, simply for them to make a livable wage and be able to get a job that pays well, or even decent. We are bankrupting kids before they even have a real income, and it makes starting life a whole lot easier for the rich in America, just like many other amenities the rich get for hoarding wealth.

College needs to be affordable, and we need to give these future generations a chance to begin their life without the fear of dying before they pay off their loans, and really start living.