Have you ever let yourself forget something unpleasant because you were enjoying something wonderful? Like choosing to eat a milkshake even though you are lactose intolerant? Or forsaking that writing assignment to go to the movies with your best friend? Sometimes things sound so good we forget to look at the down side. Neglecting to write that paper may give you a poor grade, but you will pretend you don’t know that just so you can see the newest hit in the theater. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what seems like a good idea that we just don’t care what the consequences might be. Free college is like that. Many people right now are pushing for the United States to outlaw public college and university tuition. And let’s just admit …show more content…
The government – and the people – would be strained to provide the funds. If the need is greater than the amount the government can provide, colleges may be forced to refuse potential students, being unable to afford to educate them. Andrew Kelly stated this perfectly in his article, “Tuition is Not the Main Obstacle to Student Success”. He claims, “To keep pace with wages in the rest of the economy, colleges must pay professors more, which raises costs year over year. Add in the ever-expanding corps of administrators and support staff…if the public’s generosity doesn’t keep pace with these increases, schools that are prohibited from charging tuition will have to turn students away. Insisting on free tuition could lead to rationing, not open access”. And even the students who are accepted most likely would not experience college as it is today. Extracurricular activity funding would most certainly be cut out of necessity, restricting arts and athletic programs. Scholarships of all kinds would disappear as free tuition would force universities to use that money to meet their costs. These worries are realized in Germany, which has been tuition-free since 2014. German colleges have conceded that they are short of funds. The state governments – and with them, the people – are struggling to meet their needs. Many people believe it …show more content…
People select colleges mainly by their numbers. How many of their students graduate in 4 years? How many of their students go on to graduate school? How many of their students were successful in the workforce? But in reality, colleges are not liable for their students’ success. The students are. Hunter Rawlings commented in his article “College is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating It Like One”, “The courses the student decides to take (and not take), the amount of work the student does, the intellectual curiosity the student exhibits, her participation in class, his focus and determination — all contribute far more to her educational “outcome” than the college’s overall curriculum…Yet most public discussion of higher ed today pretends that students simply receive their education from colleges the way a person walks out of Best Buy with a television”. Free tuition will not help this problem. In fact, it is likely to worsen it. Students of today tend to think that colleges should have the burden of providing them with good grades and success, rather than accepting the fact that those things are not just given. They are earned through dedication and hard work. Free tuition would help encourage this by giving students more incentive to feel irresponsible. If it costs them nothing to attend college, why would they need to stress out about doing well? They could always just try again.
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
State budgets could become strained, which might lead to cuts and decreased access to programs that students want to take. Budget cuts may also need to take place, or pulling from other departments to make up for the loss of tuition. These could come from high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. This could result in many teachers, administrators, and other school district employees losing their jobs due to schools needing to save money. Along with less funding for the lower levels of education, comes a weaker education. So college might be free, but if you can’t even get into college (due to standardized test scores, GPA, etc.), then what is the point of having tuition-less college?
First and foremost, Trade Schools, Colleges and Universities states, “After all, more and more of today's jobs are knowledge-based or require advanced technical skills. So a better-educated workforce would help fill many of the skills gaps that prevent America's economy from growing faster.” If more people attended college then there would be more jobs to fill in America’s economy. There have been droughts in America’s economy, but with free college tuition, droughts would decrease. It would not be fair that someone who could be successful at the job would not be granted the ability to get the job because they don’t have a piece of paper with a signature on it compared to someone who does average or mediocre at the job and had the opportunity to go to college. Making college free also comes with consequences. So graduation numbers might drop, or the people who do graduate might not be as well prepared for the workforce. Also, with more people choosing to attend public colleges because of their tuition-free status, many schools might have to create wait lists or expand the ones they already have. State budgets could become strained, which might lead to cuts and decreased access to the programs that students want to take. Here is the weakness, although it benefits many students, the nation's existing
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
There is no doubt that college is expensive, price tags for some universities go over a quarter of a million for just a bachelors degree! (That’s if you graduate in four too). The extravagant price for college is no doubt crazy. Trying to better yourself and your future shouldn’t cost $250,000 plus. If public universities were to be free a plethora of problems could be solved instantly. According to Forbes the National student loan debt has surpassed 1.2 trillion dollars (Denhart )! This number is growing exponentially as more students enroll in to college. Why question then whether college should be free? Well, this number is the total amount of student loan debt from all students that have exited college. Some of these students are freshly graduated while some are aged with the wisdom trying to pay their loans back. If public universities were to be free and funded by our federal government, our government would pay this amount within ten years. Relatively a short amount of time considering that the student loan debt is an accumulation debt from students that have graduated more than ten year ago, also this also greatly increase with the following years as well.
Their claim might be that in having free-tuition colleges and universities the education system will lose its value on students. Whereas, knowing that students are paying for class course they are more focused and determined. They don 't want their money to be a waste. And I agree, however there are other ways to approach this. In Germany one still has to pay for their education, but with a small tuition fee and their own living expenses. In fact, international students at Germany have to pay an annual of approximately $6,300 in tuition and living expenses where 90 percent goes to paying one’s living expenses and the other 10 percent goes into university fees. After all in the U.S, the average annual cost for attending college is about $35,000 where about only 30 percent of that money goes to living expenses; compare that to the 90 percent in Germany. We should consider lowering the prices of tuition where students still feel the need to focus since after all they are still paying for the college classes. The ultimate goal is not to be free-tuition but to lower it just enough that individuals who want to pursue a career will be
This makes students pushed harder to focus on any college that will be offered free. Thus, it wouldn’t take them longer than the average 4 years, due to them working full time as well as schooling. With fees out the way, parents don’t have to worry about not making enough savings for their child to be able to attend college. Students will be more focused on any subject in school as they strive for their degrees.
The tuition pays for a substantial amount of things such as: If there is not any money going towards the school, they are left with weak methods to pay for all of these necessities. Without these requirements, the school no longer be beneficial to anyone. To begin with, if the school does not have any income, then there is no way to pay the professors enough money for what they are qualified for. Because of this, they may be forced with less skilled instructors. Second, a little to no income could result in poor technology within the school. It could even extend to a severe case of no technology at all. Lastly, tuition also covers the maintenance on the buildings within campus grounds. However, the school’s buildings would no longer provide a proper learning atmosphere if there is no money for repairs. Inadequate teachers, poor technology, and unstable buildings are not the best combination for students who are trying to receive a higher education.
Why should we be allowed to have the opportunity to have free higher education or decrease the cost of it? Going to college should be our right and cost of tuition should not affect our decision on whether to go or not. The ability to have free higher education with little or no cost can open the door and create many great different paths for us. The more education we have, the more opportunities grow, but that can’t happen to all of us due to tuition costs or even being in debt with loans for not being able to have the money to being with. With tuition being eliminated or decreased, people would attend college more not saying a lot would, but just the fact that more people would consider college. Germany abolished tuition which provides a model for the United
There are many who believe the higher the tuition the better the education the student will receive. Nemko stated that even though some high school students are able to make it through college, he offered that the benefit for those students would not outweigh the “often six figure cost.” $100,000.00! What exactly are students are paying for? William Deresiewicz, who wrote “The Miseducation of America,” spoke of “institutional competition, expansion, and borrowing” as well as “administrative bloat, the rise of the “party track” and its concomitant amenities.” I believe this may be the bulk of what students are paying for in main stream universities. Colleges should promote what they have to offer based on what students are able to learn during the time spent at college, not based on which colleges have the most available amenities. Charging more for tuition can be beneficial to a college and its board members. However, it does not always seem beneficial to the students attending or family members paying the tuition fees. Nemko argues that “institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible” and goes on to say that colleges offer big and small classes, but that the classes are being taught by teacher’s assistants and not professors. I believe that if a college is going to charge so much for students to attend, its classes should be taught by an actual professor. Deresiewicz emphasizes that “colleges and universities have a lot to answer for.” He states that “if they want to regain their support of the larger society, they need to prove that they are worthy of it.” One way to do this would be for colleges and universities to take all the funds they are putting elsewhere and invest it into the college professors. Professors should know that
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
Around half of students get jobs out of college (Wei). That is an frightful statistic that inclines people to conceive that attending a more competitive college is necessary to job attainment. Each American dreams of becoming a successful person, one who reaches their goals, maybe has a family, and a steady income. Some seem to regard that in order to reach that level of success they must attend an elite school, a school that is usually private, and only admits fewer than ten percent of applicants. The Ivy league receives much attention among the elite schools. “Only 0.4 percent of undergraduates attend one of the Ivy League schools... too much attention is paid to these eight institutions” (O'Shaughnessy).
In the film, Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore brings up many issues but the one that stuck out the most was the idea of free college and how it worked in other countries. From the film, an individual could come up with a reasonable conclusion, that free college brings more benefit than harm. What is usually meant by free college is in fact the idea of free tuition. Instead of having students be in debt for most of their lives, they can focus on studying and not have to work at multiple jobs. Even after completing college, most students find themselves accepting jobs that do not involve the degree they had received. If the majority of the population received free college, more people would take advantage and therefore,
Free college in the United States is an unrealistic dream that cannot and should not be implemented. Free college has been implemented in other countries; however the United States’ education system will not properly function as well due to several reasons. In other countries around the globe, higher education has been largely free for those who meet the admission standards. The U.S. already provides free secondary education for all students However, this free system of education does not properly prepare students for college.
A college education is necessary today in society. Students can focus on their academics and try to get a high score. The cost of education for each student has become more difficult to afford. Thus, many students and teachers wonder if free college tuition must be granted. Free education must be responsible and funded by the U.S. government because it will help students focus on their studies, and encourage them to work harder in school. Even thought many people think that education must be free, it is very important for many reasons such as the economy, quality of education, and value of a college degree.