Should Education Be Free?

Jeremiah Lasher

10-6-16

Argumentive essay

                                         Should education be free

Should education be free? This is an epidemic that has been sweeping the U.S. Many people have said that it should be free, people have said that only community college should be free, and some of just said that it should always be paid for and or even be more expensive due to the fact if the college is free then we have to get more money from other things, such as taxes.

People that believe that education should be free in general have a few good arguments on their side. One of these arguments is “everyone else is doing it!” This is very true, many other countries have a free education system such as Argentina, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Norway, Scotland, Turkey, Brazil, and Germany. A good reason why it should be free is that it is proven that it does work. Finland is the number one in education in the world currently. Their pre graduate education consists of only three- four hour days and absolutely no homework. And their post-secondary education system consists of no payment. This is a good argument for the pro free post-secondary side because they believe that if the U.S. do that then U.S. should be able to climb to the top of education in the world.  Another argument that has been made is that if it was free more people would likely attend because polls have been taken and show that people from a higher class family are more likely to go to college then people from middle and lower class families. That means someone who could have some of the best skills in that field just can’t afford to go get the education they need to get a job somewhere. (Emily Bennington)

Now arguing that college should not be free. There is many different arguments for this side, such as when the students get to go to college for free then how will the economy take the blow from losing that much money? And how will the economy be able to make up that money that is being lost, and the only rational thing that could be done is by raising taxes all over the country. The average cost for a college student’s tuition for a private college is around $34,000. In 2014 there were a total of 20.2 million college students accounted for in the U.S. That means at a rough estimate $686,800,000,000 would be lost if all college tuition was free across the United States.  There is roughly 318.9 million people in the united states today, and in order to pay off that amount of money each person would have to pay an extra $2,154 in taxes to cover the loss of no tuition fees. Some argue that it would turn into the great depression all over again. The United States is already in a huge amount of debt and this would just add onto that debt if it was not paid for, therefor the us would become an incredibly weak nation with that much money loss. (Matt Bruenig)