In a recent article published by the Odyssey, a writer brought up the issue of free college tuition for public universities. The article has gotten 76,000 shares, but I can assure you, not everyone shared it because they liked what they saw (myself included).
Read the full article here before continuing.
The article has received several lengthy, heated comments, many of which accuse the author of 'white privilege.' Other commentators have defended the author and the points presented in the article, but reading the comments section is a pretty brutal experience, and I can only hope that it doesn't degenerate into a 'YouTube comment fight' (we've all seen those, and cringed).
Before I say anything else, I think the author should be commended for stating her opinion. It takes courage to talk about a controversial topic — let alone take an unpopular stance, explain your reasoning, and stick by it.
I hope that anyone who reads this knows that this response is not an attack on the author's character. She merely stated her opinion, and now I am stating mine.
This was one of the main points presented by the author:
"If everyone is given a clear path without any obstacles, what does that teach? If everything was easy, wouldn't everyone do it?"
...If everything was easy, hm?
Who said that the process of getting into college, or even going to college, was easy?
Regardless of whether tuition is made free or not, it's still going to be hard to get into college.
It's not going to be any easier to be accepted into a university, even if tuition is free. The application process is still going to be painful and time-consuming, and the appropriate scores, GPA, and extracurricular activities needed to apply will still be necessary.
And what about the road to getting a degree?
It's still going to be hard. It's still going to be a struggle for students to turn in their best work in order to pass and get one step closer to their degree.
Students will still, as the author put it, "spend endless nights studying and panicking and writing those term papers because [they] know those things determine [their] future."
The time and effort demanded of college students are not for everyone. Even if tuition was free and that part of the process was easy... even then, not everyone would do it! Not everyone can do it!
The degree that the author speaks of seems to imply that everyone who gets into college — which is a difficult enough process already — will simply breeze through and collect their degree on their way out.
And that's not true at all.
Not everyone who enters college will make it to the end. Maybe the workload was too much. Maybe other issues came up. Maybe they decided they wanted to pursue something else. Maybe they couldn't manage it financially. (At least if tuition was free, financing a college education would be much less of an issue.)
The author also says, "If college becomes free, that means more people going to college. Which in theory sounds wonderful! Everyone should have the opportunity to go to school if they so desire!"
I 100 percent agree with that. If tuition is free, undoubtedly the option to go to college will become infinitely more appealing to people and infinitely more attainable.
Now, you may argue that people have other options. Scholarships, internships, community college, etc. — if they really wanted to get into college, then they would give it all they got, right? Won't people who want to go to college still go to college, regardless of whether it's free or not?
Then think about this: Won't people who want a degree work hard to obtain it, even if they paid no money for it?
No. College isn't like high school, where getting a high school degree is, for most, a standard part of life. Attending college is a choice, just like it's always been, and the thing that free tuition does is remove one obstacle from making that choice.
The author also talks about people who have graduated and paid their tuition and implies that it would be unfair to them if tuition was suddenly made free.
"They worked for that degree, paid money for that degree," writes the author, "and you're telling me someone else can just come in who didn't put nearly as much time, effort, or money into their degree and get the same outcome."
Okay, let's say tuition is made free.
Then, yes, it's likely that that 'someone else' would not have put in as much money into getting their degree. What's unlikely is that he or she didn't invest "nearly as much time or effort."
Listen, students don't try so hard to graduate because they feel obligated to.
Personally, I don't do it because I'm paying for it, or because my parents or the government are paying for it. I'm doing it for me. I know I need that degree in order to pursue the future that I want, and that's why I'm working so hard to get it.
I think everyone should have the opportunity to do that, without thousands of dollars of debt riding on their shoulders.
Ultimately, even if tuition was free...
Students will apply to college because they want to.
Students will get into college because their applications were good enough.
Students will work hard for a degree if they want to, and they will graduate with that degree because they were committed to doing so.
When 'getting to the finish line' is all about the effort and time you put in, why spend an obscene amount of money paying for it?
