I’m sure myself along with every other college student would absolutely love to not pay for college. The less money coming out of my pocket that can be used towards stocks or savings as well as learning to manage financial responsibility, the better. Sadly, in the United States, this isn’t the case for a lot of students. And sure, you can look at different countries like Germany or France and see that their tuition for post-secondary education students is virtually free. It’s easy to demand free tuition for college students; if X country has free tuition, why can’t we have free tuition?
That’s a wonderful question and I am so glad you asked! I think it’s a very reasonable thing to look at and want to genuinely understand. But there are a lot of factors at play in asking this question, involving what exactly will suffer in order to fit that bill and what it could do to the very definition of a university in the U.S.
In short, the answer you want to hear: yes, the United States COULD bring American student free college tuition. But that itself would come with the cost of an upheaval of change, something that you may not want to even think about. Even if you’re good with drastic change in a small frame of time, the United States is not necessarily the gift that keeps giving, and there is a hefty exchange associated with that free tuition price tag.
With Trump’s 2018 budget plan slated to be released and approved eventually, there are certainly already things you could theoretically pull from in order to cover the price of the post-secondary tuition in America. Such propositions to cut the tuition price include cutting military defense spending, tightening corporate tax loopholes, or taxing top earners more than everyone else. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were able to catch the young voter’s eye last year in talks about making college free.
Making college free doesn’t sound that hard of a concept to propose or understand. However, we don’t live in a Utopia, and we need to examine what could happen if college were to be made free.
Personally, I think the idea of having college cost nothing for students is a wonderful idea. It could strengthen the workforce and it can give low income families a chance to thrive in the same way high-income families do. With that being said, I am skeptical of the reality of the proposal passing, unless all three branches of the U.S. government become blue and there is magically no more gridlock in Congress. But that wouldn’t be fair nor checked, and most likely will not happen. Consider: Bernie Sanders won the presidency and signs an executive order to implement free tuition for all college students, starting in Spring 2018. How dramatically would your life change?
Even if you aren’t a student in college, you would still see change with free tuition. If you were to think of a college as a business (because it is), the supply and demand model would show you that as demand increases, supply will decrease. As more students do not have to pay for college, said college will become more competitive, driving out people who may not have had a good secondary and primary educational experience or turning them to a college they may not have wanted to be at in the first place. This would increase dissatisfaction among students, as if there isn't enough already. The amount of teachers will spread thin, classes could be packed, and residency occupancy would be completely maxed out. All of these amenities, for free, not to mention potentially free meals, since I no longer need my meal swipes or extra dollars? Sounds like a party, which could hurt the reputation of a college, too.
Free college sounds so fantastic; but, how will we pay for teacher salaries, more classrooms, supplemental resources for students, cover the already existing student loan debt, still contribute to the concept of a business, give organizations within the college money for extracurricular events, fund athletics, and more? It’s certainly a tall order. Relying on donors or even donations from the rich isn’t always reliable. It could be taken out of tax dollars from the richest in our nation, but that would create a gridlock for the motion to pass and would also discourage some donors from donating at all.
I’ll be the first to say again that if it comes down to it, I do support free college. I think it’s a wonderful idea and I think that a lot of people who come from varying socioeconomic backgrounds would not have to worry about paying for college and could focus more on school. However, with our current free market system and administration in office as well as the three branches seeming pessimistic about the future of our country, I am skeptical of how this could be achieved without major drawbacks. If it can be accomplished and I am proved wrong, that’s awesome. If people of low-income households see more financial help in the future and they have alleviated stress from that, I am all for it! However, as the current situation sits, I don’t know that we will see universal, free tuition or even reduced tuition for a while. Some states have taken it upon themselves to implement the notion, which is really cool. But I’m not sure that from a federal standpoint that it could be in the country’s best interest, especially with someone at the top who admittedly didn’t know that healthcare could be so complicated.
