Students that go to school wouldn’t be any different than ones that paid they’re way in. Though, a student is still a student and we would both have to deal with mundane prerequisites and overwhelming course loads. If it was free, it just wouldn’t mean as much because everyone would have one.
When it comes to college, if your family isn’t well off then you’re stuck finding a way to handle it yourself. Financial aid is a huge tool for those that don’t have the disposable income because the government is willing to front most of the money needed to cover costs of tuition, room and board, books, and other essentials required to pursue a higher education. If we took away the cost of tuition, it would allow many more students the opportunity to pursue a greater future. It would also cause a huge deficit in our country’s budget.
David Deming director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, states in an article from The New York Times; “Eliminating tuition at all public colleges and universities would cost at least $79 billion a year, according to the most Department of Education and taxpayers would need to foot the bill”. That is a staggering amount of money to go toward free education.
Those potential free education funds could be used to go to other fundamental support systems we already provide throughout the United States. Free education would cause college to lose its integrity because anyone could go do it, therefore losing its status as something to be hard earned and not given like a participant trophy from a kid’s soccer match.
Numerous countries have tried free higher education, in which it works if all the other ducks are in their rows. Here in America, it would be a huge downside if education was a free endeavor. One of the biggest aspects of America, is that we are the land of opportunity. People from all over the world come here in search of a better life, the “American dream”. Schooling should go hand in hand with that aspiration. One reason employees with degrees get a substantial bump in pay rate is because they have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice their time, energy, and livelihood to go to school and earn the right to make more than those who don’t think college is worth it.
Another author from The New York Times, Catharine Hill, who is residing as president and professor of economics at Vassar College, speaks about the financial system. She says, “To get those students to and through college, we must focus on what they are asked to pay, not on making it free for everyone”. Hill’s ideal further demonstrates higher education should not be free, but better structured within the financing area with student loans, financial aid, or bank loans.
If it was free to everyone, then people wouldn’t put in the effort that is required. If they failed, just want to dabble in different fields of study, or if they didn’t want to commit then it wouldn’t matter; they could always fall back on the governments dime. A lot of us don’t know what we want to do when we grow up. And that’s okay. But, they should spend their own money to find that out. College is a privilege; it shows that we paid the dues and followed through with its struggles. If it was free to everyone, then people wouldn’t put in the effort that is required.
When it comes to the current pandemic situation our country is facing, we have never had more job opportunities available to us. Due to those who don’t want to get vaccinated, the job market is flooded with current work for potential candidates if they are willing to take the initiative to take advantage. Kevin Carey, who directs the policy program at New America, conveys “COVID will bankrupt many colleges. But the need for higher education won’t go away, particularly with widespread unemployment”. (31).
The pandemic has offset jobs and funds for millions of families over the course of the last few years, reaffirming the importance of the individual’s need to work and not rely on the government for financial support. Meaning, a college degree is our best option for offsetting the imminent need for qualified people to fill positions in more obscure fields. The best way we can alleviate, is to have a degree-oriented education, allowing us better job opportunities and an escape from minimum wage mediocrity.
If we can make the proper steps to change the perception on how we deal with the costs of education, then we can look into better ways of making college more affordable for those that may need assistance with funding for schooling.
Until then, we must keep the system how it is because making tuition free would take away from all the hard work of late-night studying and maintaining 2 full time jobs to offset the debt we incur to pay for school like we do now. It would detract from the merit of achievement the rest of us have earned because a college degree won’t mean the same thing it did when we scraped by, eating ramen every day to cover the cost of our tuition. As said before, college is a privilege, and it should be treated as such. I hope one can come away with a better perspective of what higher education can do for us if were willing to put forth the effort required.
