Times Are A Changin' - Tuition hikes go up while unemployment gets worse for graduates

London student spray painting at a riot.

Everyone that goes to college has to pay off their debt eventually.

But what if there were no jobs in your field and a huge bill creeping up to $100,00 in student loan debt on top of needing money for your car and living expenses? Tuition rates are going up, even in by 8 percent in community colleges according to a new report by the College Board.

A huge problem causing uproar is that the amount of student loans taken out last year exceeded the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year.

Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports USA Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the U.S. Department of Education and private sources.

Back in fall 2005, the tuition rate for Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Md., was only $83 per credit for an Anne Arundel County resident. Now it’s $90.

Residents of other Maryland counties that go to AACC must pay $173 as of fall 2011.
Out of state or foreign students have to pay a whopping $306 per credit. In order to get financial aid, these students would have to live in Maryland for at least three months, according to the AACC Financial Aid office.

Students at AACC are feeling the pressure from both school and life, but making thoughtful decisions has helped them deal with college.

Lacoya Godoy, 23, of Annapolis, Md., is a mother, wife, Navy veteran and a very busy student. She plans to become a nurse midwife after college.

She was honorably discharged after serving 5 years as a medic in countries like Japan, Australia and Kuwait.

“I’m taking 17 credits this semester and 17 next semester. I think I spent about $2,500 on classes plus books,” she says.

Without MyCAA, the money the Navy gives to pay for her classes, Godoy would have to rely on loans, grants and financial aid to attend school.

The Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit research group based in Oakland, Calif. and Washington, D.C., has astonishing numbers on what lies ahead for college students and recent graduates.

Maryland ranks 33 out of 50 states for their amount of borrowed student loan debt, according to the Project on Student Debt.

The average debt in Maryland was $21,750 for 2010 graduates. 54 percent of the class of 2010 acquired that much debt. But colleges around Maryland, like Johns Hopkins University, are going way up. It's really up to the Obama administration and smart planning of parents or students to figure out how to relieve students of stress and debt for the years to come.

PSU Football Head Coach Joe Paterno Fired

Paterno at a Nittany Lions football game /The Patriot News

Most students at AACC have mixed views about Penn State head coach Joe Paterno getting fired, according to an informal poll.


Paterno, 84, retired early Wednesday after 46 years, only to be fired hours later by PSU's Board of Trustees.
 

"I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case. I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief." he said.

Paterno and president Graham Spanier were fired after failing to inform the police about former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky allegedly molesting a 10-year-old boy in the shower in 2002.

Sandusky is being charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse and reports say he allegedly found these children through his charity, The Second Mile. 

Assistant coach Mike McQuery caught Sandusky but ran away. He asked his father for advice then reported the incident to Paterno. 
.
Violent riots broke out at PSU around 7:30 p.m.

Students rebelled against cops, coughing from pepper spray and tipped over a CBS van in support for Joe Paterno.

"Yes, he should have been fired. He should have been hanged," said Jane Creager, 56, from Pasadena, Md.

Freshmen at AACC thought differently.

"Not really," said Connor Bachmann, 17, from Gambrills, Md.

"No," said Eddie Pena, 18, from Centerville, Md.

"Yes," said Phil Cook, 26, from Baltimore, Md.

 He compared it to former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who served time in prison for dog fighting in 2007.

Other students had no idea who he was. Some were adamant he didn't do anything wrong.

"No," said Rebecca Edmisten, 19, of Pasadena, Md., getting defensive and telling a friend across the picnic table outside that Paterno wasn't the one abusing the children.

"Yes, he should of. Just like the Catholic Church," said Steve Kay, 71, from Severna, Md., as he sat angry while reading a newspaper on campus.

Interviewing sources

My story was about the AACC Foundation, Inc., at the Isaac Cox House. Nobody at the office wanted to help other than the coordinator, Denise McCord. She helped a lot by answering my e-mails because she was harder to reach by phone. Unfortunately, when it came time to talk to donors or scholarship recipients, it was up to me to scour through old foundation newsletters to get a second source for our story. I chose Brian Gill, who owns a catering company called Gill Grilling and created a scholarship for hospitality, culinary and tourism students. He picked up the phone right away and answered about 5 of my questions.

Denise said she would get back to me because I can't contact donors myself due to federal laws, but I didn't have time to sit and wait so that part was annoying. I'm sure I could have found a better source, however, there really wasn't much time and I had to find someone, even a scholarship recipient but it would have been easier with Denise's help because newsletters can only give you so much information. Flynn tried his best too, it was just easier to find someone else on my own due to the deadline. I do not know why she didn't give us a scholarship recipient even though I'm pretty sure we both asked. In the future, I will rely on the phone more than e-mails but this was a different scenario since Denise seemed busy at the office.

The Isaac Cox House still needs help in dire economic times.

Isaac Cox House Coordinator Denise McCord

With the economy slowly creeping back to normalcy, the amount of money that is donated to the Isaac Cox Foundation at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Md.,  is getter bigger and better for students. During the recession woes in 2009, the Isaac Cox Foundation received less than $1 million for scholarships and programs. This year, the foundation raised about $1.2 million.


They are in charge of the college’s 50 year anniversary kickoff gala on Oct. 15.

The economy still affects the way the foundation raises money and helps the college, especially since alumni have less money to donate.
I met up with one of the employees at the Isaac Cox House, where the foundation is run.

“We’re going after more targets, needs and reducing our mailings,” says Denise McCord, who has worked as the foundation's coordinator for 1.5 years.

The Isaac Cox Foundation was created in 1967 to help students and the campus transform into something better. Since 1961, AACC has served more than 53,000 students annually.


McCord says the donations come from many places including:

• Anne Arundel Medical Center
• Whole Foods Market
• Towson University Foundation

The white two-story house where eight people work today once belonged to Isaac Cox, a farmhand manager, who owned and worked on the land in the 1800s.

Meet Isaac Mabe

The son of a Navy officer, Isaac Mabe, 19, moved around until his family settled in Annapolis, Md., when he was 4 years old. Mabe is a second year student at Anne Arundel Community College.

Isaac Mabe in the classroom.

 “It’s cheap and pretty much easy to transfer. I stay at home so I don’t have to pay for a dorm room,” he said.

After the fall semester, he plans to major in communications at Salisbury University. He says he really liked the campus the first time he visited.

He went to Ocean City, Md., over the summer, but he’s not a beach guy.

“My summer was pretty bland,” Mabe said.

The Cedar Point Amusement Park in Ohio is one of his favorite places to visit. He says he likes it because it’s clean and has one of the best rollercoasters.

Mabe also enjoys watching and analyzing movies. His favorite movie is Blade Runner and his one of his favorite shows is Breaking Bad. Mabe says Blade Runner can “definitely be boring” but he enjoys how “noir-ish” it is. He says Breaking Bad keeps him excited and expecting for more.

He has two cats, Stripey and Crook Jinks, and a terrier/Pomeranian mix named Recee although he prefers dogs more because his cats ignore him.

What's Going On in Libya?

Finally got some Internet via the temporary library at Anne Arundel Community College! Woo! I decided to choose two of my favorite news sources to dissect what's going on in Libya. First, I used the New York Times, also known in N.Y. as The Times, then I chose The Guardian, a great news source from across the pond (U.K.). To be completely honest, this is the first time I've gotten involved with the news in Libya. I know about the Lockerbie tragedy, but I had no idea what was going on in Libya until I saw Qaddafi's face splashed across various news media networks. In the NY Times article, I learned that some people, known as loyalists, are being captured and still want to die for a country ruled by an evil dictatorship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/world/africa/30loyalist.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=libya&st=cse
The headline reads "Qaddafi ‘Gave Us Dignity,’ a Captured Loyalist Says" and I was surprised that these people exist simply because the riots and rebellion seemed to outnumber the loyalists.The loyalist featured is named Faraj Mohamed and while injured in a Libyan hospital, he still vowed to remain loyal to Qaddafi.  “What is happening now is because of the rebels, not Qaddafi,” Mr. Mohamed said. It seems kind of crazy to me because I remember watching TV and a female citizen exclaimed that he has been killing and torturing its citizens for years. This article helped me realize that maybe this is because of nurture versus nature. Perhaps Mohamed is like this because his family is loyal to Qaddafi's reign of terror, then I realized he is like because of fear. When he's alone with "innocent" patients, he was all for Qaddafi.


 "When the rebel captors entered, Mr. Mohamed often abruptly switched the tone of his comments. “Now I think that all Libya is more united,” he volunteered at one point, temporarily contradicting his previous statements for the benefit of his captors. 
In another apparent attempt to mollify his captors, he at times blamed Colonel Qaddafi’s propaganda for his plight. Until he was captured, he said, he had believed the reports on state- run television that the rebels were foreigners, bearded Islamic radicals, or bloodthirsty monsters who ripped out the hearts of Qaddafi loyalists" 





It's hard to know what's the truth and what comes out of fear. For my two cents, I will believe the rebels over the Loyalists any day. 


 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/libya-shows-british-crush-war-growing 


In the Guardian piece by journalist Andy Beckett, he uses first person and objective view to describe the wars going on between Libya and British troops have been ongoing for more than a decade. It was a different view of what's going on. I learned that Beckett is one of many journalists that wants to describe the war through his personal experience but cannot.


I thought this tidbit was interesting: 

"Wars are complicated; their outcomes often unpredictable – especially in faraway countries of which we know little. And since making peace with our European rivals in 1945 and withdrawing from almost all our colonies in the 50s and 60s, it has been in distant, unfamiliar places that we have fought. Bellicose British journalists who opine about such conflicts from a safe distance, judging in an afternoon the merits of the Kosovo Liberation Army or Libya's National Transitional Council, and the justification and best military tactics for siding with them, ought to be more careful.

It's hard to see that happening. The British press generally prefers certainty to caution and nuance. Decades of cutbacks in reporting from abroad, driven by recession, the digital erosion of newspaper profits and, quite possibly, a growing national introversion, mean the foreign context for our military interventions feels in ever-shorter supply. In Libya, who are the key anti-Gaddafi protagonists? What do they really want? What is the exact balance between secular and religious forces? Only the keenest students of the last six months' Libyan coverage are likely to know."

Obviously Britain has more to do with what's going on and is trying to cover the rebellion as objective as it can but there are some scars left after years of fighting numerous countries over the past couple of decades. In this piece, Beckett reminds his audience about the bombings in England that started in 1939 and says no country is threatening them now. He doesn't think Britain should be joyful about their involvement with Libya because there are cuts in their government and army defense (spelled defence in the article). The comments below think that British politicians know more about politics and what's best for their defense. I just hope they find Qaddafi so that America and Britain can prevent another major war when it's truly unnecessary.