As a college student who has been fortunate enough to have received Pell Grants, the news of The Trump Administration planning on slashing the pell grant fund is horrifying. Education is the foundation of America, so you would think with the slogan “Make America Great Again” that President Trump would take initiative when it comes to the future generations.

The education system in America is already complicated enough with the price of tuition for universities and the amount of loans that students must take out in order to pay for their education, all while having to get by with what little money they have to their name. Now I know this isn’t the situation for everyone, and I’m glad.

However, it IS the situation for a majority of students attending college, including myself, so for us, college may now be an even bigger financial burden than it was before. Many people will argue “well if you get good grades you should be able to get scholarships and a full ride, I don’t see the problem!," but honestly this is a naive mindset. The main concept of college isn’t that if every student excels the same everyone can get a full ride, it’s the notion that regardless of financial backgrounds each student should have an EQUAL opportunity in attending the college they desire without being neglected based solely on performance.

I have many people approach me and say that I am lucky to have “college paid for," and trust me I am. However, it is not something that I choose to have. It is because my mother can barely afford to take care of herself, let alone me, that I am deemed by the federal government as financially challenged and therefore able to receive government aid so that my financial income does not prevent me from continuing my educational path.

There are thousands of students who receive financial assistance each year that depend on it as a means of being able to attend school. Affordable education for students is essential in America and I am appalled that President Trump has proposed a budget cut of $3.9 billion , depriving thousands of students of their ability to become educated. It may be easy when you have a small loan of $1 million to help pay for school and pay off loans after one year upon graduating, however for the rest of us students we will now have to choose to either bury ourselves further in debt or kill our aspirations completely so that we may just get by for the rest of our lives.My word of advice for you, President Trump is why don’t you take some of the $19.5 billion budget you just proposed for NASA funding in Mars exploration and give it to the future generation to succeed. After all, why would you try to fix life on another planet when you still need to fix the lives of the people in your own country?