aid programs. David Leonhardt, opinion editorial columnist for the New York Times, reported that “on the [University of California] San Diego campus five years ago, forty-six percent of freshmen received Pell grants. Last year, the share had dropped to twenty-six percent,” showing that colleges are accepting fewer and fewer students who require financial aid. Historically, those who go to college and get a degree are the ones who will be better off later in life. If colleges are not accepting lower-income students, upward mobility will be eradicated, and the poor will get poorer while the rich will get richer. On the other hand, free college tuition would remove a roadblock for students from lower income families, giving them more opportunities to learn and making it easier for them to attend college. In order to move up in society or to pay off debt that may be accrued in college, many students choose degrees that lead to good paying jobs, but that they do not enjoy.
However, they could be more productive and beneficial to society doing things that they are passionate about. Many individuals can relate to sitting in an office, whiling away their days in boredom because they chose a career that they did not love. On the other hand, imagine if these people had chosen a career that they loved, and could put their hearts into. When people love what they are doing it becomes easier to improve the lives of others. They feel satisfied with their own lives and begin to look outward to see what can be done to help the people around …show more content…
them.
A common argument against free college is that it is not feasible for the United States. Individuals believe that it would put too great a strain on taxpayers, or cause a host of other problems. However, one college proves that free college tuition is not as hard to handle as many believe. Berea College, located in Kentucky, is tuition free for all students, and has been since the late 1800s. Berea is a work college, meaning that the students who go there help to operate the college through a variety of positions ranging from “groundskeeping and housekeeping to staffing departmental and administrative office,” (Williams). Because students are doing the work of running the college, administrators don’t have to pay staff to do it, while the students get free tuition instead of a paycheck.
Free tuition is entirely feasible, and it would only require a bit of creativity to make it less of a burden on taxpayers. Wendy Williams, author of The Free-Tuition Debate: Promises and Possibilities, believes that inventive ideas are the key to funding free college tuition and that it would not be as hard as individuals who oppose it believe. If free college tuition would benefit so many people, and is not a burden on taxpayers, then what is stopping it?
Young people today are not buying houses, saving money, or starting families or businesses, and there are those who believe that this is because of student loan debt (Kamenetz). If college debt holds prospective students back from so many things, they may decide that it is not worth it, which would eventually hurt the economy. The United States would not have enough skilled workers, and our achievements would fall far behind those of other countries.
Student loan debt in the United States is totalling almost 1.3 trillion dollars, which is 350% more than is used to be (Price). This means that many things in the American economy have changed, and college overall is less affordable than it used to be. Many people who argue against free college tuition fail to realize that prices of living, tuition, food, gas, and other expenses have risen exponentially. This makes it nearly impossible to work through college and come out on top of student loans, let alone trying to save for college.
The socio-economic divide in the United States is growing exponentially, and the middle class is shrinking. In an affluent society, the middle class is generally large and wealth is spread relatively equally throughout the population. In the United States however, this is not the case. The growing economic divide affects middle class college students especially because they do not have enough money to pay for college on their own, and there are not very many scholarships for these students. Scholarships are slated more towards lower class students, or students who are very high academic achievers. But what about everyone else? Most students are not superheroes that can balance extracurricular activities with jobs and honors classes, all of which are a must to get into good colleges. Featured in the New York Times, Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College, says that “the typical student is not the one burnishing a fancy résumé with numerous unpaid internships.” This makes obtaining scholarships very hard for students in the middle class. In the article, she also talks about how many students are resorting to living at home in order to make college more affordable, as well as going to college only part time and working up to 30 hours each week. Not only does this show how students cannot afford college, but they cannot even afford part time college. Students are choosing colleges near them rather than ones that would offer a better education. Although they know that any education is better than none, they also know that the best education is not worth all the debt they would accrue because of the tuition costs. On the other hand, free college tuition would benefit the middle class as well as the lower class.
Many people argue that free college tuition would benefit the upper class as well.
However, taxpayers would likely be paying for at least a portion of the tuition, and since upper class people pay more taxes, it may not benefit them as much in the end. The main reason that free tuition is needed is to benefit the poor and middle classes. But if the side effect is that the upper class is helped too, it does not mean that free college tuition should be dismissed, it just means that more people get an education for
less.
More educated workers in the workforce, less student loan debt, less growth of the socio-economic divide, and education that pays for itself are the benefits and promises of free college tuition. All that it would take is some hard work and creative ideas to start up, as well as people who are willing to sacrifice a little bit so that others around them, as well as the entire world, can gain a lot. Free college tuition would encourage and ease upward mobility on the socio-economic scale, which is a sign of an affluent country. The socio-economic divide is caused when people cannot gain access to an education, but we have the power to fix this by making college tuition free in the United States.