The Pros And Cons Of College Tuition

America began to see college tuition rates increase in the 1970’s and haven’t seen it stop since then, the rate is even outdoing inflation. One article put together facts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and found that college tuition and fees have increased by more than 1,122 percent since 1978 while the cost of housing and food rose less than 300 percent and the cost of medical care went up less that 600 (Quandt). The rates at which college tuition and fees are increasing are putting students in unmanageable amounts of debt. Keith Ellison, the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, said that debt from student loans has become the largest form of personal debt in America,

Hillary Clinton claims this would “be fully paid for by limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers” (Hillary for America). Many people propose that America should do this or something similar. Once advocacy group fighting for free college tuition, The Million Student March, also proposes that America should tax the one percent of the population, that is wealthier than the rest put together, to whatever percent it takes to make this happen (Fox Business). While I do think that this could make college tuition affordable, I also think it would be unfair to single them out like that, I can see from both sides that it is unfair to tax them more just because they make more money, after all they are earning it, but at the same time, they should be able to help one person become educated and become part of the workforce to make America an overall better place for everyone. Because someone on either side of taxing high-income American’s will be unhappy, I think that a sliding tax scale would be the best solution to this issue. Bernie Sanders claims this could be fully paid for by imposing a tax on Wall Street which many people agree would work and benefit the economy not in regards to college tuition at the same time. The speculation tax would be “a small levy on every stock, bond or derivative sold in the United States” that would also decrease

Many people believe that if college tuition were more affordable, and in turn more accessible, the value of a college degree would decrease. There is no denying that we would see the devaluation of a degree, as we did when public high schools became accessible to all Americans, however I still think more affordable college tuition would benefit us more than it would hurt us. At least once you have a degree you will be able to go out and get a job, debt free, with no debt to pay off you could put yourself through even more schooling to make yourself more marketable. Another downfall of affordable college tuition would be that some students would still have debt, because college tuition would only be more affordable, there would still a portion of your tuition left to pay for, not to mention living cost and other school related needs such as books. Even in the free college tuition, model that many people are advocating for, some students would still be left in debt from living costs. Affordable college tuition would still benefit us more than it would harm us, students would be in debt but not near the amount they would be in if they had to pay their tuition in