The first and foremost reason which is why should be leaning towards the choice is that although college education increases a person’s lifetime earnings considerably, the student is not the only person who takes benefit of the college degree. The education benefits the nation and even the states through the availability of more skilled workers. College education could very well be the one factor which takes America closer to its dreams.
Furthermore, despite the financial aid that is available to students from lower income families, there is a far higher percentage of Americans from the higher income families that graduate with a college degree and this factor further increases the inequality amongst the classes in the country. The people who are born into rich families are the only ones who are able to enjoy the benefit of a better lifestyle following a college education.
There are already plenty of arguments which people present against the incentive of making college education free and one of these arguments states that prior experience in the US has led us to believe that when more students enroll in college, there would be a higher percentage of them who would drop out, the wage thresholds for all of the college graduates is expected to plummet, and that student would, as a result, have lesser incentive to make their lives better and evolve into a more premium lifestyle.
There are a number of flaws with this argument and first and foremost has to do with the claim that there would be increased the number of people who would drop out of college. To the opposition, we say that there may be higher rate of dropouts once more people enter into the system, especially when they have little to lose in terms of money, but we cannot use the same argument to hold back people who desperately want college education and are hampered due to fears of college loans and a very hefty costs to bear. Also, there may be expectations for the wage rates to drop once there is more skill injected into the labor market, but this assumption only stands reason if we assume that there is going to be no progress in terms of creation of employment opportunities. It would be more reasonable for us to speculate that with more skill, there is going to be a number of business persons, and that is going to create a further market for high-skill employment.
Making the college education free is just an idea which is being argued for and against in theory without us having tried it practically. At this rate, it is going to remain just an idea until the time when we implement it and see what happens. That is the only outcome which could give us a fair idea about the practicality of the approach, and this is why the idea should be implemented first before we can start presenting assumptions. This is why college education should be made free, a reason which should be plenty for those who want the country to make progress.
Works Cited
Christ, Carol. Higher education: Should college be free for all? 23 May 2015. <http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/05/23/higher-education/>.
Kelly, Andrew. The Neglected Majority: What Americans Without A College Degree Think About Higher Education, Part 1. 28 April 2015. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/akelly/2015/04/28/the-neglected-majority-what-americans-without-a-college-degree-think-about-higher-education-part-1/#40ff2e876f0d>.
The American Interest. The Case Against Free College. 07 February 2016. <http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/02/07/the-case-against-free-college/>.
