Cartoon : A Class on College Tuition

Political cartoon by Chuck Asay of The Colorado Springs Gazette published on 06 November 2010.

In this conservative leaning political cartoon, the cartoonist is critical of the government taking control of the student loan business. It is full of good vocabulary.

You see a caricature of Obama leading a classroom discussing how to make college tuition more affordable. First, what is tuition? This is the money you pay to take a class at a college, university or private school.

The caricature of Obama states that it is skyrocketing and need to be made more affordable. This means that cost of going to school has increased very quickly and become very expensive and so something must be done to lower the price so more people can pay for it. Look at this example of the vocabulary in use: Currently the price of gold is skyrocketing and is become less affordable for those who want to buy gold.

In response to how to make tuition more affordable, one of the students suggests that colleges should compete for students in a free market. He believes there should be more competition. This means that a university should try to attract more students by offering better educational services at lower prices than another university.

Mr. Marx, an illusion of course to Karl Marx, has another idea. He believes that the government (he uses the common term the Feds to refer to people working for the US government) should take over the student loan business because a government is too big to fail (tell that to the Soviet Union!). A loan is the money you request to borrow from a bank for which you pay back over time at interest. If something fails, it is unsuccessful and doesn’t work.

At the end of the cartoon, we see the caricature of Obama asking the class who they think is going to flunk his class. In the case of this class, the first student is going to flunk and Mr. Marx is going to pass. If you flunk a class, you fail the class and do not get a good mark or grade. If you succeed and get the necessary grade or mark to move up to the next class or level, you pass it. Congratulations!