Politician, judge, and author, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, believed that “A college education shows a man how little other people know.” Haliburton was an avid supporter of college education and believed the opportunity to attend was a gift. The greatest deterrent that keeps people from attending college is the cost. One of the great controversies of our time is whether or not college tuition should be free. Some argue that the taxpayer should pay for tuition, but this ideology cannot escape its countless problems. Because this idea would cause more problems than it would fix, there is no plausible way to make college tuition free; only a little less affordable.

Jack Easterby, assistant General Manager of the New England Patriots, reports that “Nothing is free in life. If you didn’t have to work for it or pay for it, someone else did.” Even though college may be “free”, ultimately, it is not. Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, proposed a problematic plan to invest seven-hundred billion dollars to totally waive the cost of public colleges across the country. "This proposal is too indiscriminate," Eric Maskin, a Harvard economist, told "Planet Money." "Many students can afford to pay a considerable amount toward their higher education. It is wasteful to give them a free ride." 20 out of 22 economists told “Planet Money” that Sanders plan is a bad idea. (Business Insider)

That being said, there is also a problem about the time that free college has come about. Net Tuition prices are rising. Tuition is the cost of college besides food, living, and books. In the year of 1987, the net tuition price for average college student was $6,000, but after only twenty-five years, the net tuition for college now is $13,000. That is a substantial jump of $7,000 in a quarter century. The more people attend college, the higher the rates would get. In a world where tuition rates are constantly rising, placing an infinite financial burden on taxpayers is out of the question. To even begin the process of free college, the net tuition price needs to decrease and become much lower for it to begin. The increased use of financial aid for people is bringing tuition rates to 17%. Granting financial aid is something that allows students to afford a school that they sometimes would not be able to afford. Sadly, increased use of financial aid is being giving and is causing college to be more expensive. If small grants of financial aid are already making the cost of college go up, there is no way to further expand the handouts. 

Politicians are very critical of higher education, according to Vassar College economist Catherine Hill, and “there it is much more to college affordability than lower prices.” (“Free Tuition is Not the Answer”) It appears to be a great idea, but it would not affect those in middle-and low-income backgrounds. Hill explains how people need to focus on what they are asked to pay and not making it free for everyone. The proposals for free college ignore the fact that the states don’t want to support these institutions which in turn puts the burden on the families, increasing tuition and debt. Furthermore, if the money can’t be replaced than that means there will be fewer resources to teach the students. Hill urges that the people of the United States need to focus on creating a stronger need-based financial aid policy to solve this problem. 

 “Can Bernie Sanders deliver free college for all? Not so easily” by Tami Luhby is about how complicated trying to have free college for all people. It talks about how costly it is for states, who would take the biggest hit under Sanders plan. They would have to make the choice of either raising taxes or cut funding programs. In addition, Luhby explained how employers would like free tuition because they would be hiring more educated employees. Finally, she also explains how it can boost local economies. Luhby, as well, has a lot of authority on this topic. She uses links in the article to show his readers that he knows what he is talking about. For example, he uses the article, “Free college and healthcare for all—how would Bernie Sanders pay for it” to refer to Bernie Sanders plan for free tuition. Bernie Sanders plan has the right idea behind it, to have as many educated people in the workforce in the country as possible, but not the right way to do it. Bernie’s idea would cost about 70 billion dollars per year which is twice what the federal government spends on Pell grants. Free public college would limit a student’s choice in colleges as well as hurt private institutions that would struggle to compete with the highly subsidized, free college. It would practically run private institutions out of business and nobody would ever pay for college again. The students paying for tuition at private institutions would transfer over and rack up another tuition bill that tax-payers would have to pay for. If this proposal is implemented it would result in a rigid, bureaucratic system that is unresponsive to student needs (James).

Author of “The Case Against Free College”, Matt Bruenig, presents many different problems that there may be if a Free College plan was enacted. He explains how almost all college students find a way to finance their schooling by the use of tuition subsidies, living grants, and public loans. The students who work hard to earn these scholarship opportunities are the ones who deserve it. It would be unfair to offer free tuition to a student with poor performance in school who will most likely not succeed in college. There is a reason that scholarships are merit based. Free tuition for anybody would not provide any egalitarian gains and diminish the motivation for students to work hard to receive scholarship money (“The Case”). 

The opportunity to attend college is more special than a lot of people realize. The financial burden stands in the way of some, but not all. Life cannot be perfect and the government cannot manipulate it to be. Institutions of learning have become more affordable with many different scholarships. With the help of countless scholarship programs, FAFSA, grants, and other monetary award programs, college is affordable if the person works hard enough. There are more colleges in the United States now than ever before. This means that there are many more opportunities to find a college at the right price. College is a chance for people to gain knowledge and advance to be better prepared for the working world and to become a functioning member of society. The question of whether or not college should be free is still up for debate though it should not be. The operation of free college is not worth it.

One of the biggest issues in our country is that a college degree is valued too much. Workforce analysists insist that in a few years one in three jobs will require higher education to perform and there won’t be enough people to fill it. The answer is not funneling more and more unqualified kids into four year universities. There are just as many labor shortages in the workforce as white collar shortages. Learning a trade can be just as valuable as a college degree in certain situations. College education does not always translate into getting a high paying job. a recent Gallup-Lumina Foundation survey found that only four in 10 Americans agree that colleges are changing to "better meet the needs of today's students." Only 13 percent of respondents felt that college graduates are "well-prepared for success in the workforce." (James)

 Using tax money to pay for a student to attend an expensive four-year university is a gamble because they are not guaranteed a high paying job that will contribute to the economy. There are plenty of college graduates who are without jobs. According to the Economic Poly Institute, the wages for college graduates were 2.5 percent lower in 2015 than they were in 2000. The risk is too high to give away an education that could have no benefit. We should be encouraging people who cannot afford college and do not earn scholarships to learn a valuable trade and find alternative paths to success instead of wasting tax-payers money. A free tuition proposal would make more sense if there was a higher demand for specific jobs requiring degrees, but most jobs provide their own training anyways and college access is not a significant enough problem. If somebody is really determined to go, there are so many opportunities that one would be without excuse to not find some financial aid. (Luebke). 

Obama’s program that he suggested was targeted at mainly community colleges where only a fraction of students who attend actually graduate and go on to receive degrees. If only 50 percent of students at an institution are successful, then the free tuition for the other 50% would be completely wasted. Federal data claims that only one-third of students from the lowest income quartile who started at a public two-year college in 2003‒04 finished a credential in six years. Of all the independent low-income students at two-year colleges, the completion rate was 22 percent. Even the most affluent dependent students struggled and only graduated at a rate of just 42 percent (“Tuition”). This is not economically viable and would encourage ill-equipped students who will most likely be part of the unsuccessful 50 percent to want to attend. a study by Bridget Terry Long and Michal Kurlaender found that Ohio students who started at community colleges were 14.5 percent less likely to finish bachelor’s degrees within nine years than similar students who started at four-year colleges (“Tuition”). The drive to be successful is lower with free community college. 

 Obama’s plan in theory would cost about 6 billion dollars to begin with. That’s only the beginning. More students will want to attend if they get to go for free and that will jack the cost up to unimaginable proportions. 6 billion dollars plus $742 billion and $18 trillion in national debt will only drag the United States deeper into an unpayable deficit. The U.S. cannot afford to pay for another program that will quickly become an entitlement that everyone wants, but nobody can pay for. Wealthy families that could send their kids to college anyways will send them for free while middle-class families who are barely getting by will have to subsidize for that wealthy student to go to school. The proposals for free college are too expensive, poorly targeted, would de-value a college degree, and do not deliver a significant enough benefit (Luebke). Obama’s plan does not take into account that due to federal aid, most middle to lower class families rarely pay any net tuition to attend community college anyways. According to the College Board, students with annual family incomes under $65,000 received enough grant aid to cover the entire cost of tuition at community colleges in 2011 through 2012. These statistics prove that providing any more financial aid would be unnecessary for most low income families. Most of the low income college students that receive these grants end up having more money than they need to cover tuition and have an average of $1,800 to cover other costs. Even if living costs and the cost of books was not included in the financial aid, an average paying side job for the student could cover almost all of it. It just takes ambition. Low income families would end up paying way more to send their child and the children of wealthier families to college that is already being mostly paid for through government aid. 

Obama’s policy suggestion could induce students to enroll at lower quality schools. In a study of the Adams Scholarship in Massachusetts that provides students with merit-based scholarship rewards to attend an in-state school, researchers Josh Goodman and Sarah Cohodes found that the scholarship led recipients to choose less-selective colleges than they would have, and they graduated at lower rates than their fellow students who attended better and harder universities. In another study, Goodman and his colleagues found that lower-achieving students who barely scored the SAT score necessary for admission to a four-year college in Georgia were more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree than those just below the cutoff, most of whom wound up enrolling in a community college (“Tuition”). 

The current system of merit based scholarship and acceptance into colleges is the most effective system and always will be because it contains less flaws than other proposals. Changing the current system would be running a system that has been working well for many years that provides more benefits than it costs. The students who are accepted into good colleges and receive the scholarship money to do so are the people we want working our high level jobs and contributing to our economy; not students with low ambition at bad schools who will most likely fail anyways. The federal government does more than enough to supplement the lower class, but there is only so much one can do to make the workforce more successful. I believe that free college would lower than drive for students to do well in high school and would encourage them to get a free ride on the back of tax-payers. I know that if I was offered free tuition at a low level community college that I would go there over paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend an expensive public university even if it meant I would not get as good of an education. The values that people in the United States have these days are corrupted and people just want what is easy and free. The financial burden would not be fair to the poorest people nor the richest people. There is no way to give everyone what they want and free college will never be the answer. I believe the fairest and equal system is for people to earn their tuition instead of having it handed to them. This way, the people who really want to contribute to the workforce and economy will be there and the people who do not want to work hard will not hold them back from being successful.
