Satirical Piece

Education is about learning and becoming more knowledgeable with society’s necessities. Everyone needs to know Algebra, and basic reading and writing skills. So why do schools have such a strict dress code? The original dress code for women was their shorts had to be in line with the end of their middle finger. For some women, their fingers laid two inches below their belt line which happened to be the new style for women’s clothing: short shorts or a hem line on shorts. And for some women, their fingers were almost in line with their knees. This was not in style and clothing like this is very hard to find in stores. How are women suppose to buy clothes that go down to their knees if the stores do not offer it?

Many students disregard the dress code and come to school with short shorts anyways. The punishment for not having clothes be in line with the end of your middle finger is forcing student’s parents to bring in new clothes or they are sent home! Since most parents work all day, students are not able to get new clothes and are forced home. How is this helping students progress in their education? The point of school is not to dress properly, but to learn about all necessary subjects including math and english. Forcing women to wear uncomfortable clothes and do well in school is like asking an athlete to win a race in baggy clothes. It is harder to win a race because you are not aerodynamic with baggy clothes making it harder to run. Women will have a harder time learning if all they can think about is how uncomfortable their clothes are.

Schools should just get rid of the dress code completely because more students are just going to disobey the rule, until the entire school disobeys the rule. They can not just send everyone home, this would defeat the purpose of learning. So the dress code should be disregarded completely in order to protect student’s learning rights.

Editorial Cartoon Analysis

Credit: http://www.thefranklintimes.com/archive/list.php?date=2012-09-21

This picture is commenting on student loans and debt. The cost to attend colleges around the United States are increasing, even though parents are struggling to pay for their children's education. So students are forced to take out student loans. Their amount of money owed increases because of interest, while they are finding jobs after college. The student starts out with a backpack full of books and is increasing in size until after college where all the weight turns from books into debt.

This cartoon shows the bag increasing enormously from college to after college and the person getting a back-ache from all of the weight. That symbolizes the student struggling to get back on their feet because the bag on top of them, which is their student loans, is weighing them down. This is an effective cartoon because he exaggerates all of his symbols to express his opinion and point of view. The reader is given the allusion that the person can barely hold on much like the average student would be with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

(The fonts are the same when editing it, but does not show it when viewing it. This goes for all four of my pieces.)

Response to Current Event

Credit:  http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/24/the-rise-in-tuition-is-slowing-but-college-still-costs-more

The average price for in-state tuition and out of state tuition is increasing overall. This forces students to get loans because their families can not pay the higher prices. Even with scholarships, the majority of students are still receiving loans. Colleges gave out twice as many grants this year than the previous, yet colleges are making up for the loss of money from this by increasing tuition. There are over a trillion dollars owed in student loan debt. Therefore, if everyone was able to pay for their tuition, then colleges would not have to raise prices due lack of money.

This essay relates to my family a lot because my family is going through the same struggles as the people mentioned in his essay. "For many others, post secondary education would be out of the question without generous subsidies from the government, their colleges and universities, or other sources." This is very true because my parents have two kids going to college and are struggling by to pay tuition fees. The end result is I may have to get student loans from the loss of money from my older siblings going to college. “And as increases in the cost of college – including tuition, fees, room and board, and school supplies – continue to outpace gains in family income, more students fall into the second category.” This is also true because both my parents work at the university and neither have gotten a pay raise recently, but college tuition is continuing to rise and making it harder for my family to pay for tuition.

Even though it is a news article, there are still some biases discretely placed throughout the article. There is a bias through statistics and crowd counts because they start off with statistics from the 1970’s which have a much lower tuition rate and then shows statistics from 2010’s which has a much higher tuition rate. There is also a bias through photos because the photo they have at the top of the article shows a student with his piggy bank signing up for a student loan. This implies more students are signing up for student loans and gives the impression tuition prices are rising. Lastly, another bias is through selection and omission. The editor of this essay leaves out information on exactly why tuition prices are rising and instead has quotes from several people saying the average family can not pay for their children's tuition, but worded in a different way. There are no true facts behind his arguments supporting his ideas, which is why he wants tuition prices to stop rising.

Editorial

Tuition prices continue to increase

Families have a tough time paying for their children's college education, yet colleges still keep increasing prices. Is it because colleges just simply want more money? Or are they having debt problems and actually need more money?

According to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the total indebtedness from the entire nation has reached over a trillion dollars and will continue to increase because base prices are increasing. All public four year colleges have been continuing to increase tuition since the 1980’s.  On average, it has gone from 2.3% in 1984 to 3.2% in 2014. This does not seem like much but it is a yearly increase and therefore grows quickly.

Education prices are a demand. It is a very inelastic demand because no matter how the prices change, students are still going to attend college. This means each university can set their prices and they will still meet their enrollment quota. This also comes with a risk because if they raise the price too much, then not as many students are going to attend theoretically. So they are going to raise it slowly and gain the most amount of money possible. It is about the market and keeping prices ahead of the game.

Colleges also have to take into account that parents should be able to afford their children’s tuition instead of taking out student loans where they have to pay it off years later. So they reward students with grants and scholarships to create more publicity. This helps some of the parents who are struggling to be able to send their kids to college, and to allow them to follow their dreams. Over the last year, twice as many scholarships were given out than the prior year because the government realized colleges will continue to raise prices. So they required universities to give out more scholarships.

One solution to this problem is for colleges to take profits from the athletic department and use it to lower tuition by that much. The University of Michigan football department sells tickets from a range of 50-200 dollars for 8 games with a total of 110,000 people each game. This is a huge money maker for the university, but they do not use it to lower tuition costs.

Overall, the universities should put out more events that people are willing to pay for. Which allows them to lower tuition costs. This results in families being able to pay for their children's tuition.

Credit:http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-rates-growth-tuition-and-fees-over-time