Free Community College Analysis

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President Obama’s free community college plan would lead to a decrease in the quality of the community college degree. A political publisher and radio show host, Liz Harrison from Townhall contends “Perception of the value of education is affected at least a little by how much it costs. Just as the high school diploma has been devalued, community college degrees would suffer the same fate” (Harrison para. 5). The price of an education has been shown to be tied to the value of the degree, and free community college would lead to an inflation of degrees as there’s no entry price. Making community college free, would result in the same thing that happened to high school degrees, they become worthless. Free community college would make the associates …show more content…

Jonathan Rothwell from the Brookings Institution justifies “Half of all STEM jobs are available to workers without a four-year college degree, and these jobs pay $53,000 on average—a wage 10 percent higher than jobs with similar educational requirements” (Rothwell para. 4). This opens the door to vast opportunities for all Americans. From this, we can determine half of STEM jobs can be fulfilled with a degree from a community college. President Obama’s proposal would give more opportunities for Americans to take these jobs. STEM jobs are currently experiencing a shortage, as “only one unemployed STEM worker for two unfilled STEM jobs throughout the country. Many jobs are going unfilled simply for lack of people with the right skill sets” (Engler para. 7). This establishes there is a direct need to enact free community college in order to fulfill these stem jobs. Not only will community college allow Americans to take jobs in the STEM sector, but there is also a significant shortage in these job fields which community college would solve. Proponents of free community college argue the fulfillment and shortage of STEM jobs as reason to support the President’s …show more content…

However, this is not the case. Salzman from the Economic Policy Institute points out that “For every two students that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job” (Salzman para. 3). Despite the opposition trying to establish there is a shortage of STEM workers, it is evident there is a surplus of STEM workers, but a shortage of STEM jobs. A major argument supporters of free community college make is that it would help more Americans earn STEM degrees and be able to take on high paying STEM jobs, but the bleak reality is that there are not many STEM jobs available. We should not be spending $60 billion to help fill STEM jobs when Americans with degrees can’t find jobs in those sectors. More importantly, many STEM jobs do not even require a community college education as “36 percent of IT workers do not hold a college degree at all” (Salzman para. 3). A large portion of jobs in STEM either require no education or require a bachelor’s degree. This is why investing in free community college would be a misguided attempt to fulfil STEM jobs. The jobs that do not require educations rely more on job training, and the more important, high paying STEM jobs that require four year degrees would not be filled by community college graduates. It would also be misguided to say community college students who earn their degree under the

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