After I graduate, I hope to go to college and study film. I imagine going away to a beautiful campus and taking small classes where the students and teachers really get to know one another. I want to join clubs, get internships, and do a study-abroad semester. I want to acquire as many connections as I can. I want to leave college a well-rounded person with a foundation to succeed and enjoy my life.

The problem is that I’m in foster care, and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for a college like that. I’m a senior in high school now, and the next president will affect my educational goals. So I did some research into the two candidates, specifically their education platforms.

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School Choice

I found out that both President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney agree that in grades K-12, good teachers should be rewarded and no excuses made for bad teachers. Obama says there should be an emphasis on math and science because we currently rank behind many other countries in those areas.

Romney supports school choice, which means parents can research which schools are the best and then send their kids to whichever school they prefer. Under this type of voucher system, if parents believe a private school is best, they can get the government to pay for their child to attend a private school. The government would pay for kids to attend charter schools, public schools outside the student’s zone, or even an online school.

image by YC-Art Dept

This idea is both good and bad. School choice depends on parents being involved, which means foster kids could get stuck in the worst schools. Plus, the money for the vouchers to pay for private schools would come from current programs for poor and disabled students. Obama has opposed vouchers that use public money to send kids to private schools.

Paying for College

What about higher education? President Obama’s website says he has so far saved $60 billion by taking out the middleman of student loans—banks—and putting that money into grants. He has doubled the funding of Pell grants, which are federal grants for low-income students, and increased the number of recipients. In 2010 he signed a law that will allow borrowers who work in public service to pay back no more than 10% of their disposable income and be forgiven their debt if they make payments on time for 20 years.

Romney, however, wants to cut funding for Pell grants and make it harder for people to get them. He tells all the young people of America to go to two-year colleges or trade schools if they can’t afford a four-year college and learn something that will guarantee them a job once they finish studying. He says that there is no need to put more money into government grants because people can simply go to cheaper schools and get a good education.

It sounds to me like Romney wants to force me into a career that I don’t want and may not enjoy simply because I can’t afford the kind of education that allows me to study what I want. So basically, the economy sucks and I, along with other young people, get punished for it.

Though it seems to me that Obama is the slightly better option, I‘m afraid that no matter who the next president is, paying for college will still be on me.