English 1B First Article Summary

In the article "A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College" Martin and Lehren outline the ways in which rising tuition prices have impacted the financial situation of college students across The United States. Currently around 2/3's of bachelor degree recipients had to borrow money to attend college, compared to around 45% in 1992. As a result the average debt held by college students who had taken out student loans was approximately $23,000 as of 2011. The article suggests that as the government spending on higher education decreases, student debt increases, with a total debt of nearly 1 trillion dollars nation wide. This is a crippling amount of debt to be held by a country that prides itself on freedom and upward mobility. Students can no longer expect to achieve a higher standard of living than there parents generation with such insurmountable debt. The result of student loan debt is an increase in service based jobs rather than the skill based jobs that are implied by the colleges in the first place. Service oriented jobs are taken because they are more readily available and many students are financially forced to move back in with their parents where higher paying jobs may not be available. Martin and Lehren shed light on an important issue concerning the upcoming generation in The United States
Joshua Holland, in his article, "Millennials didn't abandon our institutions--our institutions failed them" outlines the changes in attitude from the Gen X to those born after 1980. The wars fought today seem much less necessary than the wars fought nearly 100 years ago, corporations and schools seem less concerned with public welfare and more concerned with turning a profit, and religion seems more about prosecution than it does about acceptance. These factors contribute to declining faith in the current institutions. As Holland puts it, "A stance of intolerance from a religion founded on principles of radical inclusion is a losing strategy" and this sentiment echoes into other institutions as well. Holland does an exceptional job summarizing the loss of faith in modern America in the face of declining standards of living.
-Mike Needle