Fight The War On Tuition

It's like the "War on Drugs," but instead it's a war on the institution giving you an education.  The latest funky Facebook ad is for a petition to convince Amy to freeze Penn's tuition at current rates.

We, the undersigned, believe that the University of Pennsylvania has a moral obligation to students that transcends the education process and continues throughout the rest of their lives. We therefore request that tuition at Penn be frozen at its current (Fall 2011) levels for ALL undergraduate and graduate students.

Dear President Gutmann,

Higher education is a significant investment. Students and their families undertake a burden of debt to finance their education. The cost of a college education has been on the rise, while the avenues that allow for the successful management of education cost have been declining.

At the state and federal levels, we have witnessed cuts in state spending to support state related institutions and the elimination of federal Pell Grant programs for graduate study. The ability of parents to borrow has been drastically reduced by the current crisis of credit; pushing a greater portion of the debt burden directly on student borrowers.

Students and families, regardless of socio-economic background, have made this investment under the promise that a good education will eventually lead to employment that will allow them to have a good future, successful careers and the ability to pay off their student loans.

Now we find ourselves in a period of history when this cycle of debt for education is no longer sustainable. Our economy is simply not generating the jobs needed to allow us to pay our loans back:

• Fifteen percent of students are entering into default in the first year of their loan payments
• At the same time, first-year earnings for college graduates is declining