Should College Tuition Be Free?

Some of the newest controversy in the United States is whether college tuition should have a price tag or not. Not everybody knows what free in this scenario means. Once they realize that it would be coming out of their pockets, in tax form, they would start wanting to take advantage of what college education has to offer and its benefits. This would create opportunists of all kinds of studying habits to enroll in school. Thus, making the already low success rates of graduating with a degree even lower. Some countries also partake in free college education in which is compared to why would not work economically in the United States. Therefore, Opportunists who have no promise in being successful in their studies would take advantage of the
The article, “Should College Be Free? Pros, Cons, and Alternatives” noted, “If a lot more people are able to earn college degrees, then the value of those degrees could decrease. And that could lead to a rising number of workers who are underemployed based on their qualifications.” This is equivalent to High School Diplomas, less than a century ago jobs did not require one in the hiring process. Nowadays, most entry level jobs require you to have a high school diploma or equivalent since a majority has such degree. Therefore, if everybody were to have a college degree, it would become similar to a high school diploma, thus having to create a new way to validate skills and learning styles. An author and professor at Arizona State University wrote on The Washington Post, “Eventually, as fewer people pay the sticker price of a college, the very definition of it will lose all meaning. After all, if everyone is getting a deal on tuition, is anyone actually getting a deal?” Anybody would take advantage of a free opportunity for education and thus the degree would be worthless. If this were to happen, it would be frustrating for the scholarly students. Would such professions where precise skill and knowledge is required become less valuable if everybody could obtain the same
For example, “in Finland, the average college student loan amounts to $1,200, which is used mostly for living expenses while in school. In Norway, the average student loan is worth $9,381. But that is still less than the U.S. average, which is $15,510” (Should College Be Free? Pros, Cons, and Alternatives). This means that the average of student loans taken out per student is way higher in the United States than other countries such as Finland and Norway. Because tuition is expensive here in comparison to Finland and Norway. But if we eliminated college tuition and put it in the hands of taxpayers and the government, we would still end up being responsible for that amount. The same article mentions that the European countries spend about the equivalent amount of money on their education system as the U.S. in their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total representation in dollar value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period. (definition according to Investopedia.com) The U.S. spends 1.36 percent and other countries such as, Finland, Norway, and Germany (countries that partake in free education) spend about 1.4 to 2% (Should College Be Free? Pros, Cons, and Alternatives). In the end, other countries can afford to pay for free college. It would be affordable for the U.S. government to handle.