Education, the most important system in our society.

Education is one of the most important aspects of society. It teaches us how to communicate with and understand the world around us, whether that be through the lens of English, Science, math, history… etc. Education helps a society pass down knowledge through the generations and allows a society to continually evolve and change, not always for the better. However, while the importance of education is recognized for kids 18 years old and under, with a vast majority of American adults having a high school diploma, the same cannot be said for college. This is because college has become both a commodity and a business that caters to the people who can afford it, an idea that is discussed in Neoliberalism and the Crisis in Higher Education: The Cost of Ideology”. College has become a commodity in two ways, first the cost of college has become exceptionally high, with even in-state tuition costing more than a student can realistically make in a year. The second way that college has become a commodity is because of grade-creep, where GPAs of prospective students have begun ballooning due to an increase in AP courses and schools that cater specifically to the “gifted students”. The problem with this is that it makes it very hard for anyone not in this small category of students to get into university. This is a problem because graduating from university can increase your annual salary by more than 50 percent. This is an issue that is eventually going to have to be addressed as only students that come from well off families can go to college, which make their families become even more well off. How can we, as a society, work to make college more accessible to the millions of people that could benefit from receiving a college degree but can’t due to the various hoops they have to jump through?