In the current election, one of the biggest issues asked about is education. Some candidates promise that they will make education astronomically better with very little of a plan and others plan to make education free for kindergarten through college. I believe that making higher education available to all people is a vital root to many of our problems. Due to this belief, I would like to explain why it makes sense to me.
Personally, I think of free education as a huge investment into our future. Yes, I did say investment. I understand that if we have tuition free education that the money has to come from somewhere. There would obviously be a raise in taxes overall, but at the same time you have to consider what these higher taxes are displacing. With these higher taxes, we are displacing the cost of tuition among other costs related to attending a university. This allows more people to follow their dreams and to help society as a whole. I believe that this is an investment that I am willing to take and you should be too.
Pertaining to the argument of free riders, there is already so called "free riders" and will continue to be. If you think of education through the spectacle of other public goods such as the national parks, we are all free riders taking advantage or not taking advantage of this public good. The parks are successful and people continue to enjoy them everyday. The argument that poorer people would be taking advantage of those who can pay for school is invalid due to the fact that you may benefit from their research and findings. There are students in high school today that have the potential to be the scientist to cure cancer, but do not have the means to attend a university for higher education. Who loses in this situation you may ask? Society loses in this situation. This is especially important for the older generations to understand. Do you want to invest in a student who is only attending college to get a degree in drinking Natural Light faster than the rest of his buds, or a student who cares about finding the cure for your cancer and is willing to work hard?As a student, I have witnessed these kinds of students first hand and would not feel comfortable trusting them with any part of my life or assets.
If you have ever heard of the phrase "Paying it forward", that is exactly what freeing education of cost is doing. Free education is the biggest pay forward anyone could be a part of. By assuming this attitude, we set ourselves up for success within breakthroughs in technology, science, medicine, engineering, and so much more. The quality of our students would also continue to increase, leading the U.S. back to the top education in the world.
By taking a look at other countries, we can see that free education works. Finland has the number one education in the world in fact and they have exactly zero assignments of homework and spend very little time in the classroom. Their model is based on learning how to be a person in society which in turn helps people learn what they excel as and focuses their goals. Germany has free higher education as well and the results are great. Just like business, competition in education is a great way to ensure quality of students. Competing for the public good of higher education filters out the kind of students referenced earlier that are mainly at college due to the fact that they were able to afford it.
For all of these reasons, making education free makes logical sense. It helps us to create attainable long term goals and continue to look at the long run more heavily than we currently do. Without this long run perspective, short term goals take over and the world continues to be run solely by money, greed, and the wrong incentives.
