Should College be Free? – Narrative Essay
According to The Argue on Tuition Free College by Keith Ellison on April 14, 2016 the cost of college has gone up by 1,220% since 1978. In 2015, 38 million american students owed more than $1.3 trillion in student loan debt. The question if college should be “free” or not should not be answered with a simple yes or no but with facts, so I will be covering the pros and cons of free college, my opinion about it, and some possible solutions. Looking at the pros and cons of a situation can help you make an opinion.
According to The Pros and Cons of Tuition Free College by Ellen Anderson on March 27, 2017 the pros about free college would be low income students would get to go the college leading to a much more educated society. Younger generations wouldn’t be crushed by student loan debt and students would freely be able to choose what they want to major in. Yet, where would this money come from? So now the cons, yes, the money has to come from somewhere. Is it tax payers, the government, or will the cost magically go away? Younger generations won’t know how to handle finances if they are never faced with them. Also, college may not be seen as important if it is just handed to everybody who wants it. If you ask me, the cons have a much better and more realistic argument.
However, the cost of college does need to be decreased. It is close to impossible for an about 20 year old college student to pay any more than a small fraction of the cost on their own. Students should be able to pay off college while in college or within a couple years of graduation. But how will the cost be able to decrease that much? Where is that money going to come from? Austin Yack, author of San Francisco’s Tuition Free College written on February 8. 2017 says that higher taxes is how free college is paid for.
For college to be completely free for everybody is just about impossible, but lowering the cost is not. College used to be more affordable so why has the cost increased so much. One solution is to earn free college, this may sound just like a scholarship but it is different. For example, a 4.0 GPA or higher your college will be 100% covered. Then it will drop, if someone has a3.
5-3.99 GPA the cost will be 75% covered, 3.0-3.49 is 50% covered and 2.99 or lower is 25% covered. This way the students working hard in school will be rewarded while still helping out everyone else.
So after knowing the pros and cons of free college I can say that completely free college may not be the answer but cheaper college is. So even though life would be easier if everything was free, life doesn’t work that way. But maybe there are loopholes we can use to make life a little easier.
