Prose

Essay 4: Free College Education


Though the debate over free college education may have begun in Europe in 1636, this problem causing discussion has finally made it’s way to the land of the free. The main fight over the topic of College Education is how “worth it” it is. Those against it bring up the topic of debt and many successful people throughout history never went to college such as: Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, Andrew Carnegie, and many other influential figures throughout history, while those who agree with the worth of college put forth the ideas that college graduates make more money, live longer, have less children, have higher employment rates, get better jobs, have better people skills, and when they do have children those kids are more prepared for their future in education and the job industry. Back in the day, most colleges were founded and attended by only the most wealthy of the Puritan population in Colonial America until the 1800s-1860s where the amount of colleges grew from 25 to about 240, a time in which women also began to be accepted to the college attending population. Oberlin College was the first to admit women in a Ladies Course program in the spring of 1833. With all of these changes to the next level educational system so early in the history of our general education system why hasn’t the cost of education changed more than it has to keep up with the economic and monetary rise of everything else in America?
“The cost of higher education has surged more than 538 since 1985. In comparison, medical costs have jumped more than 286 while the consumer price index has jumped 121. Meaning higher education is almost 4.5 times as expensive as it was 30 years ago”
If the cost of college has really risen this much, how are we, as citizens in our country of Freedom, supposed to get the chance of the American Dream we deserve if the key to that dream costs too much?
“For 4-year institutions, the increase over the same time-frame(1982-2012) extended from 3,951 to 23,066. Meanwhile 2-year institutions (that are still many of the most economical higher education options) increased in price from 2,476 to 9,308”.
College is supposed to provide citizens with the education we deserve, not deny citizens from the educational standards around the world just because the american government has corrupted America’s  rights and freedoms on the grounds of making more money. In this case, the ends does not justify the means. Greed should not decide the future of an entire country.We now have around 6,900 colleges in America that all focus on either specific subjects or every subject a person can look for in an education and about 20 million children in America that could all benefit from lower collegiate costs. Public college should be free in America because people with college education earn more money and reduce the poverty rate, children of college graduates are healthier and more successful, and the countries that currently have free college also have thriving economies.
People who go to college are more likely to get a higher paying job, earn larger raises, and in turn help reduce the poverty level in most countries. Though these points can and have been proven there are plenty of people who still disagree. One major article that disagrees with this very pointed and believed in fact is written by the offices of the Online Degree Center. The Online Degree Center makes a lot of good points, but it is hard to resist pulling their optimism into question with quotes like "Four years out of the workforce"and "Student debt". With problems like these who needs solutions?! While free college certainly takes out the problem of Student Debt, or would at the very least lessen it, the problems accompanied by being outside of the full time work force for a full four years is certainly a problem. Those four years could change a lot: job opportunities, the cost of common items, and many other things, but just because you’re in college doesn’t mean you can’t work. There are jobs all around campus and the town whatever college may be in and if you can’t find one on your own you can always go to the student office in your college and ask for the student work program. Though there are certainly disbelievers there are also people who agree with the idea of free college.The article named Is College Education Worth It? suggests that “More and more jobs require college degrees”.With this logic, doesn’t it make sense to go to college to get these jobs that now require college degrees, but with that in mind, wouldn’t it also make sense to lower the cost of college so as to make sure that these job positions get filled by qualified people who know what they're doing because with the lower cost of college they could finally afford to go to college. Another idea given to us by ProCon.org’s Is College Education Worth It? is that “College graduates are more productive as members of society”. Assuming that this is true, why wouldn’t America as a country and a government try to increase the number of college graduates in America to make sure that all of America’s citizens are productive members of society?
Another point well pointed out is the fact, or idea for those who aren’t completely convinced, is that the children of those college graduates are more likely to do well in K-12, having an adult in their family that can help them with their homework, advanced or not, and are more likely to go to college after high school because they have the help they need to feel prepared for college. Those adults that went to school have the ability to tell their children what to expect at and out of their college experience. Scott Jaschik from Insider Higher Ed writes that “the more money (in total and as a share of total college costs) that parents provide for higher education, the lower the grades their children earn”. For some people that idea can be terrifying, especially when they went to college and got their higher education so they could provide their children with a better life than they had. “This finding backs the idea that parental financial support can act as a "moral hazard" in that students make decisions about how seriously to take their studies without having personally made the investment of cash in their educations”. Most parents that try their best to stay in the lives of their children are just trying to help in any way they can, possibly even in the way that their parents couldn’t when they were younger. Can it truly be true that helping your child is only making it worse? This may be true, but it’s only common in households where the child was never explained to by their parents as to why they shouldn’t get bad grades and this, in turn, should only happen in those houses where the main adults don’t really care. Children will either understand or they won’t but that doesn’t mean that college education only has a negative impact. The article Is College Education Worth It argues that “The children of college graduates are healthier and more prepared for school”. Another article named Legacies Still Get A Staggeringly Unfair College Admissions Advantage states that “A 2011 study of 30 elite institutions found that the children of undergraduate alumni ("primary legacies") were, on average, 45.1 more likely to get in”. The children of college graduates aren’t just more prepared for college, but they also have a backup plan that is bound to work if they don’t get into any other college, the college their parents went to. While some people like Christopher Denhart of Forbes Magazine might believe that “the mainstream’s insistence that college is a ticket to prosperity is harmful”, other people who’ve done the research beg to differ.
Not only have studies shown that this would be a good idea here in America, they have also proven that it’s been a great idea for the other countries that are currently participating in this such as: Germany, Sweden, Finland, and part of Canada, that currently participate in the Free Higher Education Movement. Though many people are on board for the idea of Free College, Christopher Denmark from Forbes Magazine thinks much differently. He believes that “Higher education, especially in science-heavy Germany, is incredibly costly to run and maintain”. While he may have a point, he also doesn’t really understand. In these places that now have Free College Education, they also have higher taxes, but before you think of this as a bad thing, they also have lower costs for just about everything else. There’s a college in Finland named Aalto University that is so free/low cost that the highest tuition there would be around 1000 in America. The same can be said of Germany, who has only recently started to charge for college admission as an experiment to see how their citizens would react. Though Germany, at the moment, seems to be doing fine, Christopher Denmark had this to say: “Sooner or later this “free” higher education will feel less and less free as increasing taxes will likely drive the most educated, highest earning, most able Germans away from Germany and into societies where they can take home a greater percentage of their pay”. There are certainly people who think this way and believe in this point of view, but other people, have this to say “Based on information on enrollment decisions of the entire population of high-school graduates between 2002 and 2008, I find a negative effect of tuition fees on enrollment behavior”. This means that after they began to reinstate college tuition rates in the countries where it had recently been free and found that it had immensely negative effects on the amount of college applications and enrollments. Another source states that
”the ethnographic study that I conducted about the experiences of Canadian free school students during school meetings (democratic activity during which students with teachers decide on the activities, operations and rules of the school). During this project, I attended 4 school meetings, spent a period of five weeks making observations in a free school and completed 17 interviews about these experiences. Based on this, I maintain that these meetings arose in a school that operated according to a consensus-based model and that students, while attending these meetings, experienced a combination of feelings that mostly included appreciation and concerns while being involved in decision-making processes”.
This quote explains that during a study at a school with free tuition rates this source observed many positive aspects of the college life in this school that we do not have.
In conclusion, the United States of America would most certainly not react negatively to the idea of free or reduced college costs and would in turn most likely benefit based off of the information provided above. As one source states “Alternative models of schools that operate democratically such as free schools (democratic schools in which students and teachers largely have similar rights and obligations) can offer a great deal in terms of democratic education”. Without college education where would America be and without free or at least lower tuition rates how can the citizens of America be expected to afford college education in our everyday economy?