The total amount of student loan debt Americans currently owe is $ 1.2 trillion. It recently surpassed credit card debt as the number one financial burden in the United States.

If you cannot stop thinking about how you are ever going to get a job to pay back the thousands of dollars in loans you will owe after your stay in Oswego, you can at least take solace in the fact that there are millions of current students and graduates who are also in debt up to their eyeballs, so you are not alone.

College costs have increased 1,225 percent since 1978, far outpacing inflation, hourly wages and housing costs for the same time period. It is no mystery why higher education has gotten so expensive: lack of funding and an exponential increase in administrators.

According to the Department of Education, there was a 60 percent increase in the number of “higher-ups” between 1993 and 2009. These positions are often six or seven figure salaries. So, while public funding for universities has remained stagnant, schools have been forced to jack up the prices for books, tuition and especially room and board.

As much as I would love to blame detached bureaucrats in Albany and Washington for their lack of support, we, the students, are just as much at fault. Our poor voter turnout disincentives politicians from speaking to us or for us on the issue of college costs and funding. If we do not consistently vote in national and local elections, our representatives have no reason to work for our interests. Information on college costs is often hard to come by and has become a political football, tossed around to pick up a few votes around election time. While it was refreshing to have a presidential candidate in Bernie Sanders speaking to the importance of tuition reform, it is imperative for us to make it a top priority. We have no right to complain if we do not vote.

Eighteen-year-old students fresh out of high school can be overwhelmed with the detail of college expenses, but every university private and public should make transparency a top priority an educate their students on why they are paying what they are paying. Then as students, it is our responsibility to go out and make the changes we want to see in our system.

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