The Cost of Your Future

            The article "A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College" by Andrew Martin and Andrew W. Lehren is an in-depth view of the rising costs and expenses of attending college across the country. The article opens up with the personal experience of Kelsey Griffith and her trials of struggling to pay off her staggering $120,000 in student debt. Griffith reports being convinced by school faculty to attend and pursue her dreams, leaving out the discussion of costs. "I know a private school would cost a lot of money," Griffith says, "But When I graduate, I'm going to owe like $900 a month. No one told me that. Griffith's case is similar to many other's, such as Christina Hagan, who paid $1,000 dollars a month to supplement her education, and Jillian potter, who has accumulated $80,000 in student fees. The article explains the development and history of higher education costs and how they have come to reach such staggering highs, as well as various statistics showing the exact numbers of the price hikes in recent years. It also mentions how for-profit colleges aggressively convince students to enroll with the premise of achieving their goals, without the discussion about the financial issue. This current occurrence reflects on the whole of the state of higher education, and in order to build their future careers, people have to make a crippling trade-off of a stable financial position for a degree that may or may not land them the job that they desire. In accordance to the American Dream, higher education is a highly sought after luxury that not everyone is readily prepared to pay for. Ineffectively, someone must struggle to pay off student debts, oftentimes with multiple jobs, to revive their financial stability.
           The second article, "Millennials Didn't Abandon Our Institutions -- Our Institutions Failed Them" by Joshua Holland explains how younger people are deviating from the normal life paths of the generation born before them, such as delaying or completely avoiding marriage, being less religious, less sociable, and even less patriotic. It explains that an increase in individualism has empowered young people to make their own decisions and think for themselves. However, this increase has lessened the prevalence of long-standing traditions such as religion and morals, and the constitution of marriage. The reflection on the American Dream would suggest that people are increasingly aware of what they themselves wish to do with their own lives, at the expense of possibly alienating their culture and identity.