The debate over the cost of higher education has been going on for decades, and will most likely continue for decades to come. Some argue that the cost of colleges and universities is fine the way it is, others argue that it should be reduced, and then there are those who feel colleges and universities should be free.
I know plenty of people who are currently paying off thousands of dollars of college loans, and I know others who will soon have to start, but I also know that they chose to go to college despite the loans that would wait for them when they finish.
People choose to go to college and pay to go to college, because at the end of the day, that degree will set them apart when applying for a job. That degree will get them a job that someone without a degree could not get. "But if more people are going to college and graduating, more people will be qualified for more jobs." If you feel this way, you are not wrong -- but then what does that mean for you? What does it mean for any individual if hundreds of thousands across America have the same exact qualifications as each other?
Anything free always sounds good (especially to a struggling college student) but personally, I would rather have a quality education that will set me apart than a free education that would make me mediocre. That's not to say I don't believe the cost of college is too high -- because it is and it keeps growing, but free college is not going to solve all of our problems and here's why.
Free college will not prepare anyone for the real world.
The purpose of high school is to prepare students for college, but the purpose of college is to prepare students for the rest of their lives -- a life in which things rarely come free. While students have to pay for living expenses and books, those are not the only reason they are struggling in college.
Some students are just completely unprepared for the workload college creates or the difficulty of that work, leading to lower graduation rates or higher rates of students repeating courses. Handing students money will not help them to overcome these obstacles, and most certainly will not give them a sense of what the rest of their lives will be like. According to Andrew P. Kelly of Education Next:
simply throwing money for living expenses at students is unlikely to remove other clear obstacles to success and may well exacerbate them. For instance, how would free college improve student readiness? Federal data show that 68 percent of public two-year college students have to take at least one remedial course; the average student who starts at a two-year college takes 2.9 remedial courses.
These statistics are not due to the price of higher education, but rather due to the lack of preparation offered by some high schools in America. Helping students become successful in college is not by making things free; it is by preparing them in high school and teaching them how to overcome obstacles standing in their way.
Funding will run out.
Colleges and Universities cannot just simply exist. The funding has to come from somewhere to keep them open and pay their faculties. Without tuition, this money would in large part have to come from the public -- and not by force. If the public so chooses to stop funding a college or university, it will eventually be forced to shut down leaving all its enrolled students without an education.
With only a public-based funding system, it is likely colleges and universities would not be able to employ as many professors and would therefore also have to eliminate some of the courses they could offer with a tuition-based funding system. If students do not have the same opportunities to majors or courses as those in other countries, then we will not be at all competitive in those fields. In his article, Kelly also stated:
Meanwhile, federal projections predict that college enrollment will grow over time, putting further strain on public budgets. If the public’s generosity doesn’t keep pace with these increases, schools that are prohibited from charging tuition will have to turn students away. Insisting on free tuition could lead to rationing, not open access.
What is the purpose of creating an educational system that will be forced to prevent students from getting a higher education if funding slows down? At least with the educational system we have now, there is always a way to make college a feasibility if one wants to go. If they do not have the grades, they can begin at a two year college and transfer to a four year college at any time. If they do not have the money, they have access to apply for loans.
People take seriously what they pay for.
While the cost of college could undoubtedly be reduced some, the fact of the matter is that people appreciate things a lot more if they had to pay for it on their own. That's not to say that people don't appreciate a few handouts here and there, but paying for things on your own is much more rewarding and most likely much more appreciated.
Think back to the first big thing you bought for yourself -- a car, a home, maybe even just a computer or a cell phone. Finally being able to pay for any one of those things with your own money probably felt extremely gratifying and those things were probably well taken care of. The same can be said for education as well. Chenny Ng, an education policy researcher at Northwestern University, wrote an article for the Washington Post and used a study done by Martin Coleman of North Dakota State University to show the importance of paying for college. Coleman studied the notion of "sunk cost" and found that:
People are more likely to continue with an endeavor in which they have made an investment. He found that people were more likely to stay in classes if they had already paid something in tuition — but that sunk cost did not apply if an endeavor was free and participants had invested only their time.
How important money is to us is probably one of America's greatest strengths, and also greatest weaknesses, but the bottom line is that it's an incentive. If we've already started paying for college, it's an incentive to finish and get a degree. It's the incentive to go to college because of the fact that as of 2014, according to The Economist, college graduates make almost $18,000 more a year than those without a degree.
Making college free will by no means drastically increase the number of students that graduate each year because, as I previously stated, there are other obstacles than just the cost of education that students are facing. Reducing the cost of tuition could be the most beneficial way to ensure that students are still getting a high quality education at an affordable rate, but driven to complete college due to the investments they have put into it.
College makes us competitive.
Last time I checked, we still live in America and Americans love a good competition -- that's why sports are on almost every night of the week. Many are well aware of the term "inflation" in relation to money: it’s a general increase of prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. Now, think about this in terms of college students. If everyone could go to college for free and get an average education, competition would be sparse, or quite possibly non-existent -- more and more people could graduate with diplomas from these universities providing an average educational system. But what would set them apart from each other? Wouldn’t a free-college model simply inflate a college diploma, eventually making it nearly meaningless? In his article, Kelly states his belief that free college would completely take away from the competitive culture we live in:
A free public option would crowd out innovation and limit competition. There is plenty of innovation going on outside of the public sector, from competency-based programs to career boot camps to new forms of credentialing. Rather than asking how reforms can encourage an array of options (public, private, or for-profit) to emerge that fit the needs of today’s students, the free-public-college crowd wants to simply cram more people through the same old expensive, mediocre model of education.
Free college wouldn't set anyone apart or allow for any sort of educational diversity, and all the same people would be applying to all the same jobs with all the same qualifications -- and what good does that do for anyone? Our culture has been competitive for hundreds of years, so creating free college would meaning completely changing our culture. There would be less competition to get into colleges, while there would be more competition for jobs, there would be sparse skill-set competition in applicants (making it more difficult for people to get jobs) and we would be a hell of a lot less competitive with the rest of the world, as all Americans would have access to a mediocre education.
Is college too expensive? Absolutely. But giving the higher educational system a complete overhaul and making colleges and universities free will only cripple us in the long run. We need opportunities to be set apart from each other and to receive top-notch educations should we want it. What good is a higher education system with minimal resources, a mediocre staff and a limited course offering? Sounds a lot like a lot of high school to me.
Our current system is not preventing anyone from getting an education -- and while many blame the cost as their reason for not going, there are most likely other factors, because loans are accessible and will be easier to pay back with the $18,000 more a year you will be making than those without a diploma.
I don't know about you, but I want to pay for my education. I want to stand apart from the hundreds of thousands of other young adults my age looking for jobs. I want to feel rewarded for the investment of money and time I put into my four years of college and proud of all that I will be able to accomplish because I chose to make that investment.
