The United States: land of opportunity. Our nation draws such a pretty picture of higher education. It even portrays funding college as a piece of cake. Students trot over to their student financial aid office each year, shake hands with a smiling representative and leave feeling confident that they’ll foot the bill for college after all.

What a … um, nice thought, but few have the luxury of such a “Leave It to Beaver” scenario. Full-riders and wealthy students aside, college is one of the biggest financial commitments — and nightmares — students will ever propel themselves into headfirst. And, at the thought of it, many feel themselves coming down with a nagging headache.

Paying for college is a reality and not something to whine about; a fact of life, right? A golden ticket to future success.

Sure, unless the process is a little shady, which seems to be even more a reality lately. And who’s the culprit? None other than our trusty government.

Congress currently is taking a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde approach to student financial aid. Lawmakers express their generosity by providing federal loans and grants. But those same legislators reveal a sinister side when they play with the possibility of chipping away financial aid, which, by the way, accounts for a measly 2 percent of the federal budget.

Let’s backtrack to the mid-’60s when college students, some of them our parents, breathed a sigh of relief at the introduction of the Higher Education Act — the key to establishment of such aid programs as the Pell Grant, Perkins Loan and Federal Work Study.

The Higher Education Act of 1965 was a milestone for kids who couldn’t afford post-secondary education, but the idea hit the skids somewhere along the timeline.

Back in the ’60s, the number of grants handed out to education-hungry young adults far outweighed the number of loans — I believe the ratio was 80 to 20.

Nowadays, attaining financial aid is more of a burden than a gift. That previously mentioned ratio, in fact, has flipped around; now, according to the U.S. Students Association, grants account for less than 20 percent of financial aid, while loans take up a whopping 80 percent. Also, one-third of those loans are unsubsidized, which means students pay for interest out of their own pockets. See a trend here?

The government is acting as a disciplinary parent, treating students as the punished child. What it gives us, it can take away.

Take, for example, the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Many students who single-handedly finance their educations can’t get their hands on needed aid because they list on the form their parents’ financial status. Translation: If your parents make a decent living and don’t support you financially, you’re the one who suffers.

And forget filing as financially independent if you’re under 24 and unmarried.

Another governmental glitch clouds the aforementioned Higher Education Act, which currently is awaiting reauthorization from Congress. The catch is that while the bill inches toward increasing the Pell Grant award, it also threatens to wipe out funding for certain other programs, including some state grants.

Who can guarantee that students will see an increase in aid for years to come? If grants continue to take a beating, so will students’ bank accounts. Less aid equals more debt.

Debt also is a fact of life for students. But remember those credit-card bills and car payments that loom in the shadows? Stack those on top of loan payments, and you’ve got some major stress on your hands.

The prospect of being in an avalanche of debt is scary. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

An even more frightening concept is that some students will assume they can’t afford the big bucks for college and either drop out or never attend.

From what choices can students pick and choose? They can take the financial beatings. Or they can lobby Congress for more spending on financial aid. But while this is already happening in states such as Ohio, members of Congress maintain that they don’t hear the students’ voices and that they don’t understand the crisis of student debt.

They can’t hear us? They don’t see through the pretty picture of financial aid?

Maybe they’re just not listening.

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Staci Hupp is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Grimes. She is the editor in chief of the Daily.