If you belong to a middle class family and are struggling to pay for college, you're definitely not alone. According to FAFSA's website, the FAFSA system takes your family's taxes and benefits they receive from their company and subtracts it from the cost of attendance at the college of your choosing. The remaining money is your need-based aid; the amount of money they will provide for you based off their formula. That means good news for the lower class! If your legal guardians aren't raking in the dough, you basically get your college paid for.
Proletariat student attitudes
In many lower class school districts, this fact is advertised to the Students. The students who knew their family fit into this category stopped trying around sophomore year of high school; why try for outstanding grades when you could be average and get into most colleges in the area anyway? They didn't need to meet standard requirements for scholarship money on the grounds that government Funding has them covered.
Many students who consider their families in the lower class financial category admit they had no reason to care about their grades in high school but they still felt very fortunate to get a good amount of college paid for or they most likely wouldn't be attending right now or anytime in the near future.
Most student's families have been apart of the lower class financial category for a few years, so they confess that their high school jobs take priority over school work because they only had to worry about getting a C average to get accepted to the local universities.
Middle-class student attitudes
Where does this leave middle class kids?
Scholarships are for the bright and exceptionally talented; what about the general population - the average kids? During high school, most middle class kids come to the understanding that they are not going to get any "free money" from FAFSA because their guardian(s) make enough money to keep the entire family afloat.
This does not mean many families can afford to drop thousands of dollars in cash to instantly pay for their kids' education.
To be able to accomplish this feat of having no debt after graduation, many parents would have to sell their homes and live a completely different lifestyle than they are used to. All parents worked (and continue to work) hard for the money they earn; most kids are not going to ask their parents to abandon their way of living to fund their tuition!
The start of a solution
This is why we need more scholarships for the kids who are "average"; most students average a 3.0 to a 3.8 GPA cumulative in high school, which is still something to be proud of. 3.0 or above is the average GPA requirement for athletes to stay on their sports team, but they still get almost full ride scholarships because of their talents. Not every kid can play sports or join an extracurricular activity because they are too busy working full-time to relieve some monetary stress in their future. We should strive to be a society that rewards hard work and dedication - like grades - and not strictly provide for those who appear to need it more.
