With the cost of college tuition rising rapidly, the financial burden becomes a heavy one to bear. The idea of college education being free begins to sound highly appealing, but when you consider the implications, it is in fact far less than ideal.
In order for the government to provide funding for students’ college expenses, taxes need to be increased. There is no “free lunch” — it must be paid for somehow, and the money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the pocket of the working American taxpayer. While in school, you would be able to enjoy the cost-free education, but after graduation, you would end up paying for it in taxes. Not only would you be paying the full expense of your own college degree, but the expense of others’ degrees as well. Over your lifetime you would essentially pay more in taxes than you would have had you simply paid your own tuition. Everyone has the right to an education, but it is not the government’s right to force you to pay for other people’s education.
If university tuition were funded by the government, private institutions would become unable to compete with subsidized, free public universities, therefore going out of business. Why attend a $50,000 per year private college when you can attend a public one for no cost? This results in a narrowed selection of schools from which students can choose, limiting overall variability in the college education system, as well as eliminating the competition that drives schools to provide stand-out education and services that would otherwise convince prospective students to choose their school over another.
Not everyone even needs a college degree; it is not the only gateway to the middle class. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 46 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that don’t even require a college degree. In addition, degrees in subjects such as gender studies and the like offer no real return on investment, meaning a waste of government money, and therefore a waste of taxpayer dollars. Students should rather be encouraged to pursue alternative forms of education and training for real-world careers, such as vocational-technical education, which are far less expensive than the traditional two or four-year college.
In Germany, aside from small administrative fees (upward of a few-hundred dollars), citizens attend University cost-free. The number of Germans who opt instead for vocational education has declined. On the other hand, the cost to taxpayers of subsidizing higher education went up 37 percent. Economists speculate whether the government will be able to continue supporting these costs.
When a government provides more funding for education, they then hold more bureaucratic influence, granting them more authority over how colleges operate. When the government is in control, institutions won’t be as innovative as they need to be in order to provide a quality education that prepares students for our ever-changing society and economy. Money is power. If the people want power over their own education, they must pay for it themselves.
