Persuasive Essay: Why Free College Should Be Free?

Many students are attracted to the sound of a free college education; even political candidates have started using the promise of free college to win votes for their campaign. The idea does sound good to present college students or future college students, free college for whoever wants it. Such action would allow many students to attend college that previously couldn’t. As many people hit the roadblock of, “How do I pay for a higher education?” This is due to the fact that the average cost for a bachelor’s degree in the United States for in-state tuition is around 18,000 dollars a year (NCES). This issue has been debated about for years and has been included in many national and state government discussions and political campaigns. While

With many plans, the government would be obligated to pay colleges to teach students. These plans would include the government giving money to individuals for college or to the college directly. This fee would then trickle back down to who pays the government, the American taxpayers. So instead of people just having to pay their own way through college and deal with their own debt, they end up paying for everyone else’s college fees and debt for the rest of their life through the tax system. As William Hoar states, “The use of other people’s money does not make it “free”” (42). He also says in his article that a prominent person that supported the type of plan for free college admitted that the idea was not feasible, Hillary Clinton (Hoar 42). This would cause an increase in taxes for the American people who already give their fair share to the government. “Shifting costs from students to taxpayers is not the same as making higher education more cost-effective” (Kelly 39). And the taxpayers could not afford this type of plan; taxes would have to be too high for it to operate correctly. Another point to make is that, “…net price has “no relationship whatsoever” to graduation rate at public colleges and universities” (Camera). So this doesn’t guarantee that more students will graduate college, only we would assume that more will attend. The best route to

The current system is prospering even though students are acquiring debt. The amount of student investment in higher education is considerably larger than even that of the golden age of public funding in the 1960s (Hoar). The cost of college requires students to invest their own time and money to fund their higher education, which means that they have something to lose if they fail to graduate. This drives them even harder to succeed. The current system could be revised to allow students to attend at a lower cost, but should not be reduced to be free to the