Blog Stage Three: Substantial commentary or criticism #1

The article I chose to write about is entitled, "Make College Affordable" and the author is Charles E. Grassley a Republican senator from the state of Iowa. He is writing about the need to make college affordable. The author's intended audience are people who decide how much college tuition will be. Students who believe tuition is too much along with parents of students who have to pay these outrageous fees for college. He states facts for both sides that there are reasons why tuition is so high and he also states facts about why tuition should be lowered in price. He states that he asked 24 higher education experts why colleges can not use their endowments to help out with financial aid or student tuition so people don’t have to take out huge loans they will not be able to pay off their fees for years to come in order to get a degree. The degree is the all important key to success in the working world and the only way to get it is by going to college which is overpriced and expensive. The author of this article is very credible because he is a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, with jurisdiction over tax policy the position he holds makes this a credible author also by the sources he cites evidence throughout the article with the facts, numbers, and percentages he provides in the article also makes it credible. He states the amount of endowments colleges received in just one year and colleges like Harvard, Yale, and the University of Texas grew in billions of dollars from the year 2006 to 2007 alone. He proposes the question to these higher education experts why colleges can not use their endowments for help in lowering tuition costs and he says that they provided some answers that could be legitimate but said that most were as pathetic as the phrase “the dog ate my homework”.