While I understand that you all have passion and interest in following Bernie’s message, you must leave the college issue alone.

There are two reasons college is so unaffordable, and the Bernie supporters embody both.

The first is artificially inflated prices. The government passes legislation allowing fantastic loans, countless grants, and public scholarships. (I’ll leave private scholarships out- they are the only reason many of us are able to study. And they have a good place). All of this extra money is allowing colleges to raise their prices- by a ton.

The first thing you learn in any economics class is the basic supply and demand curve. When people have more money to pay for something, the price goes up. When the government is giving an absurd amount of people money to do something, colleges take advantage and charge whatever they want. I mean, if you could get public funding, why wouldn’t you pay $65,000 to go to school? It’s not your money. Thus, we over spend because there is no value or consequence.

The second problem is socially inflated demand for college. Society has artificially caused a massive demand for students to take 4 years out of their life to study instead of work. Taking loans and working hard for a number of years before joining a specialized work environment can often work out for people. But this is a minority of people.

We have been convinced as a society that the only way to make it in life is to go to college right after high school. We’ve been conditioned to think that without studying all of our childhood we are failures. While everyone should have the option to go to school, not everyone has to. In fact, most people don’t.

So please, leave us alone. Working summers and part time while in school is hard. Its expensive, and we don’t get much break. But it is still affordable.

Please stop driving up the price- you think you’re trying to help, but you are not.