Free Education?

Hey y’all! Welcome back to my blog! Hope you all had a good week, I know I did. We came back to school this week, and so far, this semester is off to a great start. It was so nice seeing all of my students after so long. I learn from them as much as they learn from me. I eavesdrop on their conversations and get a glimpse into their world. A hot topic these days are the presidential candidates. The democratic debate happened a couple days ago and one issue that came up that really interested my students is the cost of higher education. Elizabeth Warren proposed to make college free. Obviously, this idea thrilled many of my students, any of whom are starting university in the next year or two. I know I would have really appreciated free college. It took me almost 10 years to pay off all of my student loans. Not only would I have saved a lot of money, but I also would have spent less time in college. It took me 5 years to graduate with my B.A. in English. This is because I had to work part time on top of being a student full time in order to afford going to school. I couldn’t take as many classes as I wanted to each semester because of my job. I also failed a couple classes and had to retake them, which further delayed my graduation. Having free college would have removed the stress of working, which would have improved my academic performance. I’m sure this is still true today, especially with the rising cost of tuition.
However, not all of my students thought making college free would be a good idea. Some of them thought this idea was not feasible and even naive. They said that there’s no logical way to fund the education of every person in America. Others refuted this idea, pointing out the government overspending in different sectors, such as the military. Although I think the United States has enough money to fund free college, I do not think we have enough cohesion and unity as a country to pull off such a task. First off, not everyone agrees that college should even be free. Even if we did, not everyone agrees on how to pay for it. Taking funds from other sectors means that everyone agrees that access to higher education is more important than say, the military, for example. Raising taxes makes a lot of people mad, and not everyone agrees on taxing the rich (especially rich people). I want to know what you guys think? Should the United States provide free higher education? How could we go about doing this? Will making a bachelor’s degree free reduce its value? Does a bachelors have inherent value or does its value come from its rarity, from the fact that not everyone have one? What impact do you think this would have on the job market? Be sure to subscribe and comment below!