Didn’t get the room assignment you wanted? Still on campus as a senior? Thank capitalism, not Charlie Potts. The price of higher education has skyrocketed and enrollment is down. The college degree we are chasing in our four years at this institution costs 500 percent more than our parents’ degrees from less than 30 years ago. We know this, but we also fail to realize what it means.

We exist in a system that places a lofty price on a universal right to education. Politicians win elections by promising a great education for all. However, this right to an education suddenly disappears after the 12th grade. Instead, a price tag is slapped on education, and it suddenly becomes a right of the few and the wealthy.

In our country, higher education is a privilege, not a universal right. As college students, we understand this notion all too well. We feel the weight that rising tuition has placed on our family and our futures. We know peers and friends who are unable to attend a secondary institution.

We are taught to justify our insanely priced purchase by treating it as an investment in our future. We are told that in order to find a well-paying and sustainable job we must carry a degree, no matter the hole it burns in our bank account. We are also taught that this is a logical way the system works. Is it?

Americans are taught to embody a strong work ethic and we equate success with hard work. Simultaneously, we attribute lack of achievement to a lack of effort. In reality, the system only rewards those already on top. This is also true in higher education.

By placing the burden of education on the individual, the government perpetuates the halt on class mobility. Being unable to afford college leaves students with very few options. Even for those students that somehow piece together loans, grants, and minimum wage jobs are weighed down with excessive amounts of debt upon graduation. 70 percent of graduating students will enter the workforce with an average of $30,000 of debt. These young Americans do not lack a strong work ethic, they’re just drowning in a system that forces you to fall behind to “get ahead.”

The rising cost of college continues to not only exceed that of inflation, but also the rise of financial aid. This means more and more students and families are left with little options and the idea of opportunity for all becomes meaningless. The increases in tuition are even more drastic for private institutions, and again, the financial aid is not matching these increases.

Although we may living this reality, many of us are unaware of what it truly means for our country. What we do not understand is that this system has transformed a universal and humanitarian right to knowledge and learning into a tool to keep the wheels of the capitalist system churning.

When we place such a high price on college education, it no longer represents the expansion of free thinking and knowledge. It becomes an institution that simply churns out workers while simultaneously maintaining advantages for the wealthy and actively holding back everyone else.

We can no longer afford to laugh off proponents of free higher education. It is wholly unsurprising that young people support Bernie Sander’s proposal for free college education. Students are at the frontlines of a broken system. Tuition rises every single year and higher education becomes less and less attainable.

Our country has a strong tradition of ensuring education for all children, rejecting the notion that only privileged children ought to have access. It is time that we reject privilege as a prerequisite for higher education as well.