One of the hottest topics in politics today is “free college.” People say free college as if it’s an actual thing, but is it, really? What is ever actually free? Somebody will have to pay for everything, so that’s not really free.
“But Europe has free college.” But do they, really? How are they getting their electricity for free? Are professors just working for free? How can they support themselves and their families if they’re not getting paid? Well, because they are getting paid, through taxes.
When college becomes free, you can go to college without paying your own tuition, but when it comes down to it, you end up paying for everyone’s tuition for the rest of your life, through taxes. But some don’t support everybody getting taxed to pay for free college.
Those who don’t support everybody being taxed for free college but still support getting free college, would like to only have the top 1% be taxed for free college, such as the girl who organized the Million Student March.
This girl, Keely Mullen, proposed that we just tax the top 1% of the population. When Neil Cavuto asked if those people would be happy to pay 90% taxes so that people could get free college, Mullen said yes. But if the top one percent gets taxed at 90%, after a bit, they won’t be the one percent anymore. But as Keely Mullen said, “there will always be a one percent.” Well, yes, there will be. But, eventually this one percent will be you, and this won’t be able to fund the entire population.
On top of taxes, what about the value of the degree? The education may be the same, but will you be able to get the same for the same degree you would’ve paid for but you just got for free? Yes, you have to take the classes and get the grades, but everybody has this opportunity, and millions of other people will then get a degree that they never would have had they had to pay for it. While, yes, this is great news and everybody should have the opportunity to receive a degree, it also decreases the value of a degree.
The concept is simple, the more of something someone has, the less it matters. This can be seen in sports cards. Many of these are numbered somewhere, saying “31 of 89,” and this allows the owner to price these cards by knowing the value of it. A card is more valuable if it’s “1 of 5” or “1 of 2” because less people are able to have this card.
Based on this concept, to get the same value as a current Bachelor’s degree, you would have to get a Master’s degree if a Bachelor’s degree was free. This is because, since more people have a Bachelor’s degree, employers will want something greater, that makes a candidate stand out more than the rest of them. While this is already true, a Bachelor’s degree is normally sufficient and often one of the requirements to land a job. Now, a Master’s degree may be in the requirements for these jobs instead of a Bachelor’s degree.
So, after all of this, is “free” college truly worth it? First, it isn’t really free. Second, you won’t get the same value out of it as you do now. In my opinion, I would rather pay for my own college, even for years after the fact due to loans, than to have to pay for everybody else’s college for the rest of my life, and to have to go through even more college just for the same value. To me, it’s not worth it.
