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Unit 3 Rough Draft - This essay is about whether or not college should be free in the US.
Principles of English Composition II (ENGL 1213)
University of Oklahoma
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Sphindile Mtetwa ENG-Comp II Professor Shearer Unit 2 Essay Draft 12 April 2021 Why College Education should be free The issue of a free college education has been one of the most widely discussed topics in the United States especially in the last year on the road to the Presidential election. As you and others involved like Senator Elizabeth Warren have noted, this has been due to the skyrocketing tuition prices that have caused numerous Americans to seek assistance from student loan brokers, leaving them buried in debts for years after graduation. This debt burden not only affects the people involved but also goes to cripple the American economy as it creates a shortage in terms of investment dollars. The questions that then arise are, how do we deal with this? How do we mitigate the increase? How do we still ensure that college education remains accessible to the millions of Americans that need it? And how do we do that in an economically sustainable way that preserves and benefits the American economy? According to College Board, the college education costs have increased from $3800 to $10560 in the last 30 years (<Trends in College Pricing=). Seeing as to how this increase has and continues to affect most Americans in terms of who can afford to attend college, I think you would agree that people would naturally try to suggest solutions that are often extreme. Most of the Democratic Party Presidential candidates leading up to last year’s Presidential Elections rallied the country in support of a universally free college education and it is no surprise that their platforms captured people’s hearts. However the topic has not just been about college
education being tuition free going forward but also how to help the millions of Americas that are drowning in student debts as it is. According to Student Loan Hero, 44 million Americans currently collectively hold a total student loan debt of $1 trillion. This is an alarming amount of debt especially if you consider that an overwhelming 53% of college graduates are unemployed or work in job industries that do not even require a college degree (<What Can Students Do to Improve Their Chances of Finding Employment after College? | DO-IT=). This is a concern because what it means is that many college students take out student loans to get through college and end not finding employment which makes it close to impossible to pay back the loans in a timely manner, hence they drown in debt most of their adult life. In your blog post on Education Next, <Don’t Ruin College By Making It Free= you suggested a fix for this. You said that <by moving grant eligibility up earlier in the course of college enrollment, we could substantially reduce the risk of attending college= (Akers). I agree completely that providing sufficient grants in the early years of college would help reduce the risk for those that end up having to drop out for different reasons but it is also necessary to note that grants usually work more like partial funding and are not always adequate in meeting the students’ needs. I think this would work great for students that come from middle income families who only need the difference between what their families can cover and the tuition cost but still fails to help the neediest students who often come with zero dollars in hand. This means that even given a $5000 grant, low income families would still not afford just the tuition and fees. Add to this room and board and college remains a dream that some children from low income families do not even dare to dream. You also noted that <tuition isn’t the only, or even the most important, barrier to enrollment for low-income students= and I support this assertion completely. Even more importantly, for most low-income student it is not just their own personal
from a home whose household income is below $75000 and totally free means that the program covers tuition, stationery and required material, and room and board. The reason why I chose $75000 as the cutoff income instead of the infamous $150000 is because beyond that families can afford to pay some parts of the cost and those families will be better off served by the scholarships and grants that you proposed. And if we are making this investment in order to stimulate our economy by making sure our working class has the capacity to invest and purchase goods and services, then does it not make more sense to let those who can pay, pay and relocate the funds somewhere else? However with that said, I am aware that some of your biggest concerns about making college free are not about the fiscal aspects of it but rather the effects that it would have on the quality of the education (Akers). While I cannot dispute that reducing the amount of money that colleges get from students may potentially reduce the incentive to innovate and provide the best quality of education to their students, I do however believe that increased access is worth the sacrifice, not just for the sake of the students involved, but for our economy too. If it decides to go the free college education route, the United States would not be the first developed nation to do so with countries like Germany already providing free college education to all (Study). While I do not suggest going the extreme way like Germany, I still believe that it is great case study if we are to understand the effects of free college education. As you already know, one of the things used to measure the development of a country is to measure the development of the people of said country. This is done using the Human Development Index (HDI) which is defined by the United Nations Development Programme as <a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and have a decent standard of living=. The HDI highlights how a country
prioritises its people and takes into account literacy levels. It is then a governments responsibility that its people are educated. The Human Development Index (HDI) in Germany <has increased from 0 in 1990 to 0 by 2019= (Clark). This is a greater increase compared to the increase in the United States’ HDI from 0 in 1990 to 0 in 2019 (Countryeconomy).
washington/doit/what-can-students-do-improve-their-chances-finding-employ ment-after-college. Accessed 12 Apr. 2021.
Unit 3 Rough Draft - This essay is about whether or not college should be free in the US.
Course: Principles of English Composition II (ENGL 1213)
University: University of Oklahoma
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