Education is the basic need of today’s time. It is the prime source of knowledge used to empower citizens and societies. The problem that I am going to discuss here is critical and needs to be resolved quickly to make America great again. Higher education cost has grown rapidly since the past three decades as compared to the growth in net income of the people in America. This has caused a serious problem for young adults, at their most creative time period of their lives, to obtain a college degree. According to New York Times, this is the biggest problem of today’s generation. I suggest increasing the cost of food to raise the money for education.

How is this ‘The Real Problem’? According to New York Times, the average cost of attending a public university is $ 9000 (in 2011), the amount is 4 times larger than it was in 1974. Similarly, the average cost of attending a private college is 31000, 3 times more than in 1974. It describes the problem as the Great National Crisis because of two reasons- People not going to college and dropping out even if they went. NY Times states that more than half of selective public, community college, and private for-profit college student drop out. This number is staggering, even more the coming one. In college attainment rank, US has dropped from 1st to 14th position from 1970 to 2011, according to New York Times.

Time Magazine has a bunch of stats to stress on the criticality of this problem. It says the inflation rate for college was 2.3 % in 2011, a rate double than of 2010. It adds, “In 2011, student loan grew more than trillion dollars, outpacing credit card debt for the first time." Time says two-thirds of all US students are in debt, and if the cost of milk during 1980 had grown at the same rate as Stanford’s education, a gallon would cost $15 now. The numbers prove the problem is real.

The root cause of higher education cost going up every year comes down to The American Dream of money. Higher education has been turned into a market place where rich students pay more money to gain quality education whereas poor people cannot afford the same. The second cause, according to NY Times, is lack of government concern and poor political leadership. In the absence of strong government regulations and laws, powerful private school lobbied corrupt minded politician to keep education institution underfunded. This way private school can see increase in their enrollment rate while public schools suffer cuts on funds from government. NY Times points out the third cause of higher education cost being the rise in real estate cost. The real estate companies increase their price for the site of educational institution which leads to the increase in cost of education. Making education a need rather than a desire is another cause of increase in education cost. Schools realizing that students are ready to pay any amount for the sake of education tend to take advantage of the situation by increasing the tuition. The last cause for the rise in educational cost can be attributed to the demand for high quality education. Industries require a college graduate to be technically savvy and professionally prepared. For that purpose, college nowadays spend huge amount of money for highly technical devices and cutting edge laboratory.

Due to the increase in college cost a lot of young people are not going to college. This has immensely reduced the college enrollment rate. When a student from an average income family goes to a university, there is usually a large amount of debt under his head. This makes the student worry about the loan all the time which in turn increases the stress level resulting to multiple health problems. When more people skip or drop out of college, more people are unqualified for the job. This increases the unemployment rate of the country- a serious problem. Higher educational cost in the long term has very bad effect. It results in less educated society, downgrade in civilization, democracy, economics, and dreams.

The solution that I am offering here is simple yet powerful. It not only decreases the cost of education but also improves the health and lifestyle of citizens. It also helps to increase the economy of the country. Increasing the cost of food can save life of thousands of American. First of all, government should increase the cost on every possible eatables - groceries, liquor, and tobacco. This can be achieved by increasing the tax on food by more than 500%. Also, the tax on fast food and restaurants needs to be increased at the same rate. Huge amount of money can be raised by implementing these two steps alone. Secondly, each state should require individuals to buy mandatory Food Insurance. Insurance companies can raise very large amount of money by setting the deductible amount high. Large amount of food production can be exported to poor African and Asian countries, so that the supply of food in America decreases which results in increase in food price.

There are tons of benefits of implementing my plan. Firstly, the money raised by increasing the food price and insurance can be used for education. Universities can afford to increase in size and decrease in tuition. Average income student can go to college, obtain a degree, get a job, and live a happy life thereafter. Secondly, because of the high price of food, people will eat less and work hard to earn the money- a fit and healthy life style achieved. Third and the most important benefit of this plan is better health. When there is less food to eat, there is low change of obesity and diabetes. With my plan, Americans can achieve happy and longer life. Fourthly, immense amount of time is saved when people eat two times a day instead of four times due to the high price. The saved time can be used for many other productive work such as studies and research. Lastly, due to the less supply and high cost of food, people will start dying of starvation. This results in decrease in population of the country and increase in per ca pita of the remaining people. By implementing this simple plan, there is a huge boost in the economy of the country.