Darian Dang
Mrs. Haedtler
English 11
17 November 2014 iSearch! The cost of college education should not be free. Going to college is only an option, so students should bear the cost for further education. At one point, the state typically did pay for a student’s college education, but now since college is becoming essential, the state cannot pay the way for everyone. The education through kindergarten and high school is already free and the cost is extremely high. The colleges that have higher tuition also have much higher retention and completion rates than colleges where tuition is lower. In reality, college would not actually be free, just like free lunch in grade school is not free. Our tax payers would have to pay even more taxes for education after high school which is a great deal as of now. A college education is becoming essential and high school is insufficient preparation for work life. At one point, the state typically did pay for a student’s college education, but now since college is becoming essential, the state cannot pay the way for everyone. A little more than a century ago, in 1900, only ten percent of Americans attended high school and only eight percent graduated. Currently, almost all people are required to go to school and it is against the law for a parent to not register their child in school. Since college is becoming almost essential for work life, many students want to receive that higher education. Because of that, the states cannot pay the whole way for everyone anymore. The amount would be too enormous for the tax payers to pay.
Education through high school is free already and the cost is high enough already. There are thousands and thousands of public schools all over the country currently that are supported by tax dollars. Some schools even do not have enough to purchase the materials they need to teach classes. The lack of money currently would not allow for free college education combined with education through high school. During the early nineteenth century, education did not require as much funding as it does today so it made the cost much less compared to how it is today. In 1940, only about 5 percent of the population, most of them white men, had a bachelor's degree. And the U.S. was the most educated nation in the world! The small numbers made tuition relatively cheap to subsidize. To be able to go to college is a privilege not everyone can have and it should not be up to the tax payers to correct. To require that citizens should also pay for higher education - currently a privilege rather than a requirement is an investment that will never guarantee a return. Achieving a college degree pretty much means you make more money. In today’s society, a bachelor’s degree is becoming equivalent to a high school in earlier generations. The students through the twelfth grade are a huge investment. The cost of kindergarten through twelfth grade education is increasing each year, yet the payoff is not an investment most people are seeing. The United States still sees students dropping out of high school or graduating without the skills, reading, writing, and math that allow them to be successful in the workforce. The United States spends roughly five hundred thirty six billion dollars, or just under nine thousand dollars per student, educating students through the twelfth grade. Over the past two decades the balance of cost sharing for public higher education has shifted dramatically toward the student. Our country’s taxpayers have been paying for education through grade school for decades and it will most likely continue that way for decades. As of 2012, there was somewhere between nine hundred and two billion dollars and one trillion dollars in total outstanding student loan debt in the United States according to American Student Assistance. This being said, if taxpayers were to have to pay more taxes to support students in college, it would be a much greater amount and could even