College tuition is a topic that many Americans debate today. Does our country need it, or would we be better off with free college tuition? It intrigues everyone because many believe we as a Nation need to give everyone equal opportunity, while many others believe college is not something that should be entitled but instead earned. The topic worries everyone in America because the effects that could come from it are terrifying. Believe it or not, public education used to be free in our Nation. However, like other free educated systems, it was not actually free. There are many other expenditures that take place in a free education system that end up actually causing more social disparities than before. We found out quickly that tuition based education was the key to both equality and economic success. If someone is motivated enough to spend a lot of money on education, then they will make roughly 60% more money than if one does not obtain the expensive degree (Redd, 1). So, spending more money to obtain a degree that holds actual value is worth it in the end. And for many wondering why we would change from publicly funded education to college tuition, the answer is simple. The reason that publicly funded education was possible is because only a small percentage of Americans attended college. Since enrollment increased, so did funding requirements. That is why change was needed, and come to find out, it was for the best. Free college tuition in America is no longer a possibility because of the detrimental effects it would have on the value of college, society, economy, and most importantly our Nations success.

Throughout the last couple of years with the new Presidential election taking place, the idea of free college has been a roaring topic among our nation. With several disagreements taking place about this debate, the most intriguing is the idea of Quality or Equality. It does not seem fair that students are not obtaining a higher education due to financial reasons. Everyone deserves equal opportunity, and as us being human beings, we all care for others who are in need. As many of us have been raised correctly, the choice seems obvious; Equality. Low income individuals could dig themselves out of the positions they are in if only they could possess enough money to retrieve a college education. I had all of these same beliefs until I read Bernard Adams article where he delivers a very valid point. In his article, “Quality and Equality”, he states: “It is not in Americas best interest to deprive the able and highly motivated student, instead to extend opportunity to young individuals who show no sign of motivation or educational success”.  By this he means as we make higher education more accessible and decrease a smaller amount of spots available for the motivated student, we extend opportunity for individuals who do not want to continue education and did not take it seriously in the past. It is very understandable that everyone deserves equal opportunities, but if you are motivated enough anyone can go into debt to receive an Education that is well worth it. Receiving this valuable education will allow you to pay back your debt and make more money than you ever would without a college education. However, that being said, many economists claim that educational tuition is very harmful to our country because it decreases the amount of skillful workers in our nation that we need. They believe that college free education will allow many more educated and skilled individuals to fill these spots. What many do not understand is the high cost of education is not the reason us Americans are not filling these high paying jobs. In terms of College, there are plenty of students studying in those fields. After researching, we see that graduation rates are the main issue here. In Bob Luebke’s article “Why free college tuition is a bad idea”, he states “about 55 percent of students graduate six years after starting. The problem is not access but completion”. In the end, giving Americans this so called “equality” or free education like we want would push the graduation rates below 55 percent, causing much bigger issues than an “expensive” college education. Think of it this way, making college free would now allow those who go to community college to finally attend a public university. However, only around 21 percent of those who attend community colleges graduate, that is 1 out of every 5 students (Lobosko, 1). How do you think those students will do in real universities? For years now college tuition has been rising to rates which many American families can not pay for, making more and more students being denied the opportunity to attend a university to better their lives. Unfortunately, whether we want to believe it or not, Tuition is the backbone to educational success. On the flip side, it is proven from the effects on other countries that making education free overcrowds colleges and deteriorates both the educational quality and value of the degree. It is then up to us as a country to decide which one is more important. There are many people in our nation who are affected by this insane college expense, whether it be low income families, parents struggling to pay for their student’s education, student loan victims, Taxpayers, or just those who care about equal opportunity in general. Being a college student, I know exactly how depressing it is hearing your parents talking about tuition expenses and struggling to put you through the education they believe you deserve. The struggle that they are going through is exactly what allows us to have a valuable education. You get what you pay for, and as we all know, nothing in this world is free. That is why it is so important for us as America to realize the harm in college free education. Not only will equality not be achieved, but quality will decline rapidly destroying our nation little by little. It is better to put a dent in one’s bank account than to put a dent in the Nations precious future.

There is one major downside to College tuition, which is student loan debt. In the article “Economists say college costs hurt economy”, Catherine Cole states “Students who take school loans graduate owing an average of twenty-six thousand dollars. Often times the debt can exceed that amount. Since only fifty-five percent of college students graduate within six years, you can see where there is also a lot of students who are in much more debt than the average. Not only does student loans affect specific individuals, but it also greatly impacts our Nation as a whole. In 2015, the total amount of student debt in America was estimated to be around 1.3 trillion dollars (Redd, 1). This may be a lot, but if you actually earn your college degree you will be able to pay it off. Individuals with tuition based college degrees earn an average of $675,000 more over the course of their lifetime compared to those who don’t (Roberts, 1). They earn roughly 60% more money than high school graduates, whereas those with a free college education earn only between 7 and 12% more money. So is student loan debt not worth it in the end? 26,000 dollars seems like a very small price when you will be making back over 675,000 dollars on average.  Student loans are the most dominant type of financial aid, and if we could cancel those from our federal funds it would help our economy. Since many students come out of college with great amount of debt, they try everything they can to save as much money as possible. When individuals are saving money, they do not contribute to the economy hurting it greatly. This sets up a terrible conundrum for Americas economy; “We want more and more post-secondary education. We want more focus on academic quality and graduation. At the same point, the funding sources for higher education have been diminishing for a generation.” (Cole, 1).  Also, making college free would be much more difficult than one would think. First, Congress would have to act on implementing the tax on financial transactions. And then each individual state would have to opt to participate, which might mean chipping in more for higher education than they already do (Lobosko, 1).  The only other downside to maintaining college tuition in our Country is the distractions of other expenditures that come with the tuition. In Robert Samuels article “Why public higher education should be Free”, he argues that universities have lost their focus on research and instruction, and this loss of vision is the real, underlying crisis facing higher education. Whether those be sport events, gyms, Greek life or more, they all take away from education and research declining the value and potential of higher education.

Without researching about the topic and all there is to know about it, free college education seems like a no brainer. Why would we not make college accessible to everyone, and at the same time increasing the number of doctors, scientist, and engineers? Its not that easy. As many of you may know, there is no such thing as something being ‘free’ in life. Even proponents of free college know the money has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere happens to be the federal taxpayers. If college became free, the federal taxpayers would be hit the hardest paying 67% of the education ($47 billion) and the states would have it easy paying only $23 billion dollars a year (Lobosko, 1). This would make taxes rise tremendously and push many important programs out.  In Carol Patton’s article “Is free tuition working?”, Richard Alvarez states “The challenge with this free college concept is an unfunded mandate from the federal government. States will be forced to defund other state programs or initiatives to pay the bulk of tuition cost.” Making room for college free tuition under federal funding will take away other funding’s such as Medicare, Military expenditures, or other unemployment funds. Many of these funds that are already in place are very crucial to the stability of our nation. Removing these aids in the end will not benefit the low income families who cannot afford college, but instead will harm them a great amount.  This also will cause many Americans who do not associate with college to become very angry. That being said, if college became free it could change their perspective totally and could cause them to go to college. Many individuals prefer to take a break from school before attending college. These individuals would still prefer to pay for their tuition in whole instead of paying outrageous taxes while they are not attending college. As for those who want to attend college just for an education rather than the goal to make money, free college is not for them. The education you receive would be worthless and of very low quality. This system might force high school graduates to quit their jobs and go back to college. If they believe it is free, why not try it? Many citizens have great jobs that do not require college degrees. They will be paying for others education and getting no benefits in return, so should we not put a program in for them and push our national debt even further down the drain? It all is a never ending train. Making something free causes high demand in other areas making everything more expensive. So we are once again stuck in a major conundrum, is this so called ‘free’ college worth sacrificing more important funding such as Medicare and unemployment programs? Or should we keep tuition based educations and continue on our Nations successful path?In reality, it would be much too difficult to maintain federal funds great enough to pay for every college education wanted. That being said, all of the support would fall heavily on the tax payers. The heavy taxes would then cause EVERY American to have less money to spend or invest ultimately hurting the economy. Another huge reason to keep our education system the same is to maintain one of the top educational egos in the world. We are one of the most advanced and powerful country, so why change education that is so successful? If college became free, the basic jobs that individuals attend straight after high school would see a major decline hurting our economy. Neal McCluskey states “Of the 30 occupations that the U.S. Department of Labor projects to see the greatest total growth by 2022, only 10 typically need some sort of postsecondary education, and several of those require less than an associate’s degree. Most of the new jobs will require a high school diploma or less.” This means that in order for our economy to stay afloat, we need tuition to take place so more high school graduates can fill these new jobs. Not everyone can be Doctors, Scientist, or engineers. There needs to be some inequalities for our economy to work, which is why college tuition separates the highly motivated from those not interested in higher education. The sad thing about our country is that not everyone can be equal for it to operate correctly. If college became free, it would turn into the new high school diploma. If everyone could access it, then jobs would start requiring much higher qualifications. What would happen is that even higher education would start being required for jobs making the transfer of free college pointless (Roberts, 1). College tuition also provides a vast amount of learning experiences. From the age of eighteen, students learn how to manage their money and maintain a budget to ultimately contribute to the economy later on to the best of their abilities. They will know how to not only manage their money, but also will value it more when they have a real job. When you have something difficult put in your path, it strives you to succeed, which is why our education system should never change.

There is one issue that can come about free college that none of us can deny. Whether opponent or proponents to the idea, we all know that making college free would lack motivation to succeed. If college became free in America, many students who did not intend to pursue a higher education would attend just to party. As bad as that may sound, it is unavoidably true. Amy butcher describes this great by using a quote from John Ebersole, when he states, “The idea of ‘free’ college degrees comes at a risk. If students don’t perceive value in the credentials, they may not remain committed to their attainment; a degree that costs nothing could be valued accordingly.” College is already known to have a great amount of partying. If no tuition was needed to attend, it would not only drive students to lose focus from learning, but also cause the motivated students to cut class whenever they wanted. If you have nothing to lose, you ultimately have no motivation resulting in your failure. There is a handful of students who would attend college just to receive education, get a particular job, or just to do the best they can in life. However, all of these things would be achieved more efficiently with tuition based education. That way, the education they receive would have better quality, the job opportunity would be endless, and they could perform the best they possibly could in life. The fact of the matter is that tuition based college does everything it says it will, whereas ‘free’ college education is fake and worthless. Proponents believe that having tuition based colleges cause students to become distracted from extracurricular activities such as football, gyms, and Greek life. How do you think it would be if college were free AND also did not provide any extracurricular activities to reward students of their hard work? Do people actually think students would use their time to study and learn to the best of their abilities? No, instead, they would become very bored, realize they have nothing to lose, and party more than ever before. As hard as it may be to accept, free education is not right for America. We need to stick with what we do best. We all as a nation need boundaries and guidelines disciplining us to the path of success.

There is one thing that drives me to not only talk about my opinion on this debate but also inform everyone why I am right, and that is educational value.  If everyone else in our country has the same education, that education would have little to no value, making more education needed to have inequalities once again. Being a college student, I want the education I receive to have value. If you turn things into entitlements, it drives the quality down greatly. Our country did not learn from their mistakes with Medicaid, Obamacare, student lunches or the GI Bill, but the quality of something goes down while prices go up when you socialize something (Pullmann, 1). If college was accessible to more and more people, there would be no significance or motivation to achieve the goal of graduating. College is one method that allows us to path of skillful, well paying jobs. Since I am draining my parents of money, it pushes me to do nothing less than my best. I know what they are sacrificing for me to have an education, which is why I want that education to have some value when I’m finished. Over eighteen million students wouldn’t enroll in college a year if there weren’t some benefits to come from it. On the flip side, a record number of Greek students wouldn’t be studying abroad if ‘free’ education did not have negative repercussions (Psacharopoulos and Papakonstantinou). It might take a lot of effort to obtain a college degree, but the value of higher education will never diminish.

The number one reason Americans believe college should become free is to enforce Equality in our country. I could not agree more, and I believe that everyone deserves a chance to pursue higher education if that is what they want in life. However, free college is not the answer to alleviating these social disparities. We as Americans believe that this so called free education will solve all inequalities, and tuition based colleges are hurting the poor, where it is quite the opposite.  As perfect as the idea sounds, its not what it seems at all. At public universities (the kind we all want free), net tuition is completely free to the poorest fourth of the population, while also receiving anywhere between $2,320 and $3,080 a year to help with living expenses (Bruenig, 1). Richer students receive much less benefits overall at tuition based colleges. However, when college education becomes free, we will be pouring money into the rich students pockets and hurting the poor greatly. When college education becomes free, too much money is being used, and living grants will not be available. Also, the competition becomes harder than you can ever imagine due to limited spots. We can see from Greece’s trial with free education, there will be many entrance examinations. Preparations for these exams are very costly, giving lower income individuals a huge disadvantage from the start (Psacharopoulos and Papakonstantinou). Not only will the wealthy be more prepared for these entrance examinations, but they also will not have to worry about paying for the cost of living. It is proven in Greece that ‘free’ college is not actually free. Families spend the same amount of money on their student that the state does, whether it be the prep school or individual tutoring/living. What’s interesting is that families in smaller towns spend more than the rest (Psacharopoulos and Papakonstantinou). This is important to know because most of the time it is the poorer individuals who live in towns and the rich who live in cities. So what happens with free college education is the rich are being rewarded and the poor are becoming deprived. America’s education system however is very progressive. Most of the time, families pay based off of their income unlike the regressive free education system (Schrager, 2). It provides a lot more benefits and opportunity to the poor, and has much higher attendance rates that free colleges surprisingly. From having a free education in Greece, the demand has created a number of problems, whether it be the low quality of education or the record number of Greek students pursuing their higher education in foreign countries (Psacharopoulos, 1). We as America should see that if Greek students don’t want to attend their own education system, then that system is not for us. No matter what change happens in our educational system, social disparities are inevitable, so why should we destroy something good for no benefits in return?

Imagine if anyone who wanted to access college could, how would job availability look? It is already very hard to find jobs straight out of college. Not only does free higher education effect federal funds, the economy, society, college value, or social disparities, but it also employment in America. There would be a huge demand for non skillful jobs like restaurant industry and industry workers, and individuals with college degrees would have to fill those jobs. Then the outcome makes many wonder, what is the point of this so called ‘free’ college degree? That is why our enrollment rates are so much higher in America than those countries who have free higher education. Individuals from other countries do not want to go to college because they know the degree would obtain no value. Less people going to college would mean less scientist, doctors, and engineers. The choice is ours, what do we want for our Nations future?

Our higher education system may be extremely expensive, but it is the only way for it to operate correctly. So, I ask you, what would happen to America if higher education became free? There should be no debate because we can see how it effects other countries around the world. Why would we want to fix something that is not broken? It may be terrible to take out student loans and fork out thousands of dollars, but in the end it will ultimately be worth it.  As I have always been taught growing up, you get what you pay for. If college became free in America, it would effect our economy, society, higher education value, and produce many negative repercussions that are not needed for our nations success. What do you want for your children’s future? 
