Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Adam Boyer
Mrs. Cramer
College comp I Pd- 1
March 24, 2017
Fighting the cost of college tuition
Is free college tuition a good idea?1 Free college tuition has been a decision our country
has been making for quite some time now. Many people believe that free tuition is a great idea
and will help our youth tremendously and others believe that giving kids free college tuition is a
terrible idea and it will make our youth lazy and entitled to things. President Obama's proposal
for tuition-free community college, issued earlier this year, seems to have laid down a marker for
the Democratic Party. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is touting his plan for free four-year
public college on the primary trail(Goldrick-Rab).Free college tuition is not just an idea, but an
awful idea2 it makes rich kids entitled to things and gets them help they do not need at all, as
crazy as it seems free college would actually make things more expensive. It would also offer no
way of controlling what the universities students would study with their free education. As of
right now, college tuition is something that students are going to have to face until someone
Therefore, the youth of America is already lazy and think they own the world, so why
give them more reason to believe that they should deserve free college. By giving them free
college it creates a sense that they know that they will have free college, and while they are in
high school it will not seem as important to do their best on their school work and also on their
test like the SAT's. With free college education on the rise and being thought of more and more
every day you have to address the issues with it, kids are too lazy now with having to pay for
their college education and to tell them that they will get free college education than their
productivity rate will take a dive and their generation and future generations will become so
entitled to things that it will make you think again about giving kids free education.
They will also never know the effect of having debt after college and how to handle that
debt. Sure no one wants debt in their life but sometimes debt is a good thing, it gives a person
character and shows them how to handle themselves and how to grow up and handle their
finances. Giving free college education will not help teach the youth of America how to handle
their money, their debt and many other things that come with dealing with money and their
finances. College is full of various situations and experiences to learn and grow from and to
work with a budget is one of those things to learn. Without having to pay for their college
experience, they will not learn how to budget and know how to handle the money they have and
future income. Being able to make payments on your debt from college shows that they know
how to budget and that is a skill that you do need to have in your life. They are necessary skills
that will help you out in the long run and will create a feeling of success when you do your bills
and youre budgeting. Having to budget your student loans and your debt from college will help
Another huge problem with giving free college education would be that rich kids would
get help that they do not need at all, and that would take away from the kids that actually needed
help getting into college and financial aid assistance with kids that dont need help what so ever.
In countries like Brazil that already have implemented free college, where the rich students
already take away from the students that do need help and some can't receive it because of the
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rich kids that get help first. Critics of free college who point to this drawback often argue that a
more targeted reform subsidizing college for the poor and the middle class would make more
sense (Josephson). One thought on how to manage on not having the rich kids take away from
the kids that do need financial help is to have private institutions with minimum college tuition
just for that kids that can afford to pay tuition and can afford to pay out their debts throughout
their life. A downside to having private institutions would be that they couldnt compete with the
colleges that have free tuition because why would someone go to a college you have to pay for
when there are colleges that will give you a free education and having that would cause for many
private schools to close down and couldnt rely on donations from alumni and various other ways
that those colleges receive money for financial support. The other thought is having just
community colleges have free college tuition. I believe that this could be a decent idea for
community colleges only to have free tuition or very little or minimum tuition that would be a
substantial improvement.
It is improbable that the establishment of free college would, indeed, be of minimal cost
to those attending school. Instead of up-front fees upon acceptance, there would be a hidden cost
of tuition, including an increase of tax payments in local residences. Additionally, the value of a
college degree would greatly diminish, as warranted by the universal law of supply and demand.
As the supply of college education possibilities increases, the demand for employees with
college degrees consequentially decreases. Because of the plethora of job candidates, there
would also be greater competition in career fields. The competition in those various career fields
would be very unhealthy for our country and for our country's economy there will not be enough
jobs to support all of those people that went to college for free since there will be an increase in
student rates.
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Free college tuition is not just an idea, but an awful idea, it makes rich kids entitled to
things and gets them help they do not need at all, and as crazy as it seems free college would
actually make things more expensive it would also offer no way of controlling what the
universities students would study with their free education. This idea of free college will not help
our country at all but will instead hurt and turn our country into an overcrowding of people
looking for the same job, and millions of people being unemployed and that is something that no
one in the world should want. There is no doubt about it, education has become not just
expensive but very expensive. In order to get a good job, you need to have a good education and
qualifications but it comes at a price. Whether you are paying for your college course or not, the
situation is not 'cut and dried', there are pros and cons to both situations.
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Work Cited
Goldrick-Rab, Sara, and Andrew P. Kelly. "Should community college be free? Education next talks
with Sara Goldrick-Rab and Andrew P. Kelly." Education Next, vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, p. 54+. Opposing
Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A441690176/OVIC?u=pl1949&xid=c0cabf8f.
Accessed 24 Mar. 2017.
Josephson, Amelia. "The Pros and Cons of Free College." SmartAsset. N.p., 15 Sept. 2016. Web. 23 Mar.
2017.
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