Going to college and getting a degree is a very important factor in succeeding in the 21st century competitive world. Nonetheless, many people do not go to college because of how expensive col-lege has become and the fear of being in debt. Sometimes college does not work out for every-one. President Barack Obama has proposed a plan to make the first two years of community col-lege free to encourage people to go to college, get a degree, and make the United States the most educated country or at least catch up to the rest of the countries like Russia and Canada. Howev-er, Obama 's action of reducing the costs of community college will not significantly increase the number of students who will graduate with degrees. Instead of making college …show more content…
People do not realize how hard college can be until they actually experience it. Some will succeed while others don 't have the time and patience for it; as a result, those will be forced to drop out. Stuart M. Butler, states that Less than 20% of students who attend a Community college will graduate within 3 Years, and 15% of those students will continue and get a bachelor’s degree within 6 years (Butler). This evidence suggests that students who attend at a community college and get a degree is very low, and is even lower to those students who will continue to get a higher education after 2 years of community college. So why should the government be paying for a student’s education, if less than half of students will graduate. Is that not a waste of the government’s money? Free college will not help students because students will not take advantage of it. But instead would rather abuse the program. This will affect the students in the future because students will not be getting a degree. This will lead to students having a harder time getting a high paying job to support themselves in the …show more content…
First, free college can encourage students to go to college to get a degree which leads to a high paying career. It can fulfill those students that are having a hard time financially, and fewer students will be in debt. Second, with free college, colleges will be more likely to help students that need the guidance to stay on track and get a diploma. Clayton and Bailey mention, "If we want to significantly improve educational outcomes, we need to make college more affordable so more students can enroll, and make the reforms needed to en-sure community college students can succeed in their courses, complete their program, and grad-uate within reasonable amount of time" (Clayton and Bailey). Finally, free college can help the U.S. catch up to the rest of the countries with higher education. For example, it can help the United States surpass Russia, where more than half of adults have a diploma. Frohlich explains, “More Than 53% of Russian adults between the ages of 25 and 64 had some form of higher edu-cation in 2012, more than in any other country reviewed by OECD” (Frohlich). Although free college is an attractive idea, it will leave the United States in a bigger debt which will be hard to recover from and more students will be unmotivated to
Onink, Troy. “Federal Reserve: Collage Education Worth $830,000 More Than High School Diploma.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 5 May 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2016. The author of this article is supporting the idea that going to college still pays off. Reports show that on average an extra $830,000 is earned for those that choose to get a college degree over those with a high school diploma. Earning a college degree is still paying off, students will still come out ahead in the long run. We do hear of people that skip college and are extremely successful without a degree, but those chances are very slim. Studies show that low wages are associated with people that only obtain a high school education. The value of a college degree is worth way more than
While most people want college to be free, the U.S. should not make tuition free for all citizens. There are a number of reasons like taxing families who already have it hard, quality in education, rationing, and if people see that they do not have to pay it may lower the value in which they won 't take school seriously. Tuition free college is impossible because at the end of the day someone will have to pay for all those students attending. For example, “In college I was invested, I was paying,” The former student said, “Once it entails a cost, it’s not easy to just say, Oh, let’s not go to class today. You’re just hurting yourself” (qtd, in Make College Affordable, but Not Free). Student who barely made it
“If a college education has value, why give it away?” (Luebke). Most everyone wants to have higher education because it has value in this day and age. It opens up more career options, and lets them have more freedom to pick the career they want. With higher education being tuition-free, students might take their college education less seriously because they don’t have to pay for it (Should College Be Free? Pros, Cons, and Alternatives). Because of this, graduation numbers might drop, or the people who do graduate may not be as well prepared for the workforce. Yes, there are still entry requirements that limit the amount of students allowed into the school, but much of the drive for the students comes from the fact that they are paying a lot of money to be there. Also, giving away college education would almost certainly do the opposite of what people want it to do, which is give more money to students from richer families than from poorer ones. It isn’t that they want to necessarily take money from the richer families, but they want to give poorer families more opportunities to get money. “Without a dramatic overhaul of how we understand student benefits, making college more or entirely free would most likely boost the wealth of college attendees without securing any important egalitarian gains.” (Bruenig). This is because students from well-off families already enjoy a disproportionately successful future than students from poor families,
A look back at the institution of education over the past 20 years will reveal that once upon a time a bachelor’s degree was long since considered the marker of ultimate success, the highest level of achievement that one could make in their lives. In those days, if for some reason you failed to march across the stage on graduation day after an epic, four-year stretch of high tuition, long nights studying, and unrelenting professors that found great joy in riding your back, then you had indeed failed at life.
According to Trade Schools, Colleges and Universities “Many of America's top-performing high school students never apply to the most challenging colleges and universities even though they have the ability to succeed at them. They often come from minority and low-income households and end up pursuing more affordable, less-selective schools instead.” College can be a burden to many students in a variety of different ways, but the most common reason is due to funds. Making college free for students will help this problem by increasing jobs in the work industry that require degrees, they should be affordable to all people at all cost, as well as the funds should be completely cut off because it would increase jobs and help America's economy grow.
When hearing the words “free” and “college” in the same sentence, that is exciting to anyone who is interested in not paying those thousands of dollars for their pursued education. However, when it comes to Obama’s free community college idea, for the first two years, many people skip over the many factors that go into this issue. Some may agree with President Obama’s plan fighting for a fair chance for all student to get a degree and not go into debt receiving an education, and others argue that community college already being inexpensive will only make the system difficult to work with. While making community college free for everyone is considerate, the students with low incomes already get the aid they need without this program and the
which helps pay some or all their tuition depending on their qualification for the aid. It will be best if these aids are given to all students which will pay their tuition making community college automatically tuition-free. Qualifying for aid should not depend on ones income. As we all know most students attending community colleges are from lower-income families. In 2014-15, undergraduate and graduate students received $238.9 billion in grants from all sources, FWS, federal loans, and federal tax credits and deductions” according to the college board. This show that already the government is paying almost 75% of most community colleges student tuition through aids. It will be best if the government pays 100% of all community colleges tuition through the aid the government gives the college and qualification of getting the aid should not depend on student income tax. The obvious argument against my reason is that people will say that if the government funds for free community colleges it will increase taxpayers taxes. If the taxes increase , it will be put into good use to fund community colleges for free which will later benefit the country,because already the government is miss-using tax payers money for unnecessary things that benefits no one. As has been said education is the key for better
A $60 billion plan is being invested by Barack Obama for two free years of community colleges for American citizens in order to help with financial need. That means Obama is trying to get community colleges to be free to students that need extra support as they are living or growing up in an unstable house. Yet, community colleges being free would cause problems for many students that do not belong there. Money then would be given to all the students that are attending a community college, even though some of the students do not need extra support, nor want to be there in the first place. By doing research, it shows that community colleges are affordable to those that put forth an effort and universities would be shied away due to the price
What do people think when the words community college get brought up? How about, two-year college, more likely to drop out, or even a way for uninspired students to say they have a plan. When I think of community college, I think about how I get to stay close to home, I get to attend for free, anyone is welcome, and I am still getting an good education. Community college is underappreciated, many people believe that students will not get the college experience if they attend a community college, but I disagree. There are countless benefits to attending a two-year college. In the story, "Two Years Are Better than Four," the author and Southern Maine Community College graduate wrote an essay about the importance of community college and explains that college does still matter and she also expresses the benefits. Community college is a blessing in disguise, people need to understand and begin to take advantage of its benefits.
As people attend college, fees build up and students loan money and possibly be in debt. Not only that, some may say college isn’t worth it, but it is. Getting a degree pays off at the end, going towards your career path, making twice as much as you would work at a regular job. Students who have received a degree are slowly declining. To make adjustments, college should be free for everyone.
What if one day the tuition of your community college was to become free? If you couldn 't afford college would you go? That’s exactly what President Obama is trying to propose in his State of The Union speech on January 20th 2015. In his words he claims “to lower the cost of community college, to zero”. I am a community college student freshman at Frederick Community College. Being a community college student I value my education and feel if this new proposal is to be put in place there will be people who don’t want to be there just like high school. Community college is something that runs in my family as my two cousins have attended a junior college in the past. I am in my first year at community college and can say that it is a lot different from high school as far as the expectations and work load. There are essentially some problems with this new proposal. Once I heard that President Obama
Calling a college education “free” is a contradiction because nothing in life is truly free. Someone will be responsible for paying for this education, even if it is not the person receiving it. To support this flood of hopeful college students, the American Government will have to heavily tax the working and upper classes. Taxes will have to be inflated to compensate for the price of college, and in some cases, may become outrageously high. If the upper class becomes constantly taxed, what keeps them from dropping down a class? What keeps the middle class from becoming the lower class? In an extreme situation, if the middle and upper classes were constantly taxed, there risks a problem of creating a bigger class divide. Maybe the plan to pay for college education starts out with only the rich being taxed. In America, there are roughly 324 million people. This number increases every eight seconds, so there is a constant increase of citizens. Imagine if half of that number decides to go to college. College education is free for them, but their tuition is paid for by the upper class. Now, average college tuition runs for about $9,410 for State Universities, and around $32,405 for out of state students. This amount of money, per student, is paid for by the upper class’s taxes. Taxes are raised higher and higher to pay for all these students until they cannot be raised any further. The upper
Most students that try to get a bachelor 's degree will not achieve their goal in four years, most students will take between five and six years to get a bachelor 's degree. Not everyone is qualified for college therefor they should not attend college for free. Andrew Eichen states “Free tuition would encourage many more students to attend college, irrespective of their aspirations or interests.” Free college will also lead to the overcrowding of public universities “paying students, who are deeply invested in their studies, may be placed into overcrowded classes or worse, get locked out of them. Whatever the result, free tuition would lead to limited capacity at public universities, and in turn, lower-quality public education” (Goldrick-Rab and Kelly). Free college would lead to a potentially overeducated and under-qualified workforce. If everyone gets a college degree the value of it would decrease and the demand for jobs that require a degree would be to high and in the end the workforce would be unbalanced therefore people with college degrees wound still have to work minimum wage paying jobs. More student will go to college and in the end more students will proceed to get a doctorate degree which they will have to pay for anyway. Not everyone is capable of going to college therefore they shouldn 't go to college if
While the idea of free college is often seen as beneficial only to the wealthy, college should be free for everyone because going to college could once again be seen as a choice instead of a financial problem for many households, people could also better understand others that come from different backgrounds, and there are more
The United States gives everyone an opportunity to get a college degree. On top of the college opportunities give a great chance for jobs after the college education. Many foreigners come to the United States to get an education but they also tend to stay here, due to the job opportunities. In 2009 President Barak Obama put in a community college initiative to increase the college graduate level in the United States. In an article titled “Obama Plans Community-College Initiative”, Obama told reporters that twelve billion dollars was going towards community colleges. The goal of the initiative to have more college graduates than in recent years and to also put the United States number one in college graduates.