Should College Be Free Essay

Student loans are something that most college students face during and years after getting their college degree. Student loans have only gotten increasingly more and more out of hand for many students; a big stall occurred during the pandemic where many students just weren’t able to pay their debt and could only let it increase. President Biden announced a policy on August 24, 2022 that would forgive student debts and grant them up to $20,000. This policy sparked a huge debate on the cost of college for many incoming students; should college be free or should it be something that a person earns with some suffering. Many would automatically just say to make college free, however they do not take into consideration the damage that would be done

A professor that is good at their field cannot get adequately paid if the college is not making any money; this can also lead to the college getting professors that aren’t qualified due to these budget cuts. A college will not have the funds to improve its building or update things around the school which will give less appeal to people applying to these schools in the future. Richard Vedder (2018) States that “Raising taxes on private sector earnings to fund colleges lowers growth because the output reduction associated with higher taxes on the highly efficient and market-directed competitive private sector is far greater than any positive effects of more education administered by less efficient and market disciplined higher education providers”(paragraph 6) When a person applies to a college they apply to the ones that offer the best of the best, without the budget these schools will slowly start to lose credibility if it cannot keep up with the standards of a good

Many students work hard in order to go to a college that has a good reputation, these colleges tend to be on the more expensive side, there is a reason for this. Community college is free because it is the bare minimum of education; people tend to go there for just basic classes to save money, no big majors. This opens up the idea that a student doesn’t have to work as hard and it decreases the lack of motivation in school. Thomas Sowell (2016) writes “If college becomes “free,” even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated or acquiring any economically meaningful skills.”(paragraph