Argumentative Essay: Will Free College Be Successful?

Opposers believe that free college would be unsuccessful for three main reasons: first, free college would result in higher tax cost for the public and taxes couldn't be increased enough to provide college tuition funding; second, the tuition money is needed to provide for things like college maintenance and school supplies, and free college will lower the quality of education; and third, a college degree wouldn't mean anything because there would be no competition and colleges will be less incentivized to improve. According to opposers, the extremely high tax raise it will cause is one reason why it won't be successful. “It simply [would shift] costs from students to taxpayers,” said Andrew Kelly, resident scholar in education policy studies and director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute. Sanders’ plan of free college tuition would raise tax revenue by $13.6 trillion over the coming decade, according to the Tax Foundation’s report (Pianin). That would be insanely

Colleges invest a lot of the tuition money and fees into teachers, instruction, maintenance and scholarships and other essentials. Without the majority of college income coming from the tuition and fees, the tuition cap would limit college spending to whatever the public is willing to invest. Tuition-free college would strain public budgets even further, leading to shortages in rather than increased access, like lower enrollment rates due to colleges being unable to raise revenue from tuition increase, and that will lower the quality of education (Kelly). Moreover, most of the tuition is already used to help low income students. A significant portion of the tuition paid is returned to low income students in the form of financial aid and without it, he share for return to aid would certainly drop and probably disappear, defunding those low income students