Americans owe $1.74 trillion in federal and private student loan debt, which begs the question should college just be free?
There has been an increase in demand for a college education and a lot less funding from state governments has been given. Although there are options to help students and families afford college like FASFA, scholarships, student loans, and work study. In the long run these things don’t help much for anyone, no matter how much money they have to spend.
College should be free or way more affordable depending on the type of degree you are going for. The last time that college was the most affordable for everyone was in the 1980s. But ever since the 2000s until now the cost of college has increased by 65 percent, according to bestcolleges.com. The price has more than doubled and an expectation for most students to go has still stuck around. This has caused many people to go into debt for much of their life, and in many ways this affects people’s lives. According to Investopedia, having college debt can make it hard for you to buy a house, it doesn’t allow you to be able to save as much for retirement, and it can lower your credit score if you don’t make your payments on time.
With all of these being said, a lot of people still think that college is a good investment regardless of the amount of money it is. For example, it is easier to get a job if you have a degree. With about 90% of workers today having a graduate degree, the growth difference has been about 62 percent. According to ppic.org, “Currently, California workers with a bachelor’s degree earn a median annual wage of $81,000.” Which is way more than you can earn without having a degree. Overall, having any kind of college education allows you to have better opportunities in almost any field or workplace, and can sometimes guarantee you a job over people without it.
If college were free or had a lowered cost, more people would be able to afford it. Therefore more people would be willing to attend college for whatever they want to do in the future. If we as a society had more students going to college, we would have a lot more educated people. Having a lowered cost would also allow a lot more students to be able to complete their degree instead of dropping out. It would also give them an easier option to be able to switch to a different degree without having to worry about the cost.
The cost of college should be significantly lowered or even free for some students. It would give so many people better opportunities in life and give people more of a chance to reach their goals. It would give students and families a more stress free life of not having to worry so much about money, therefore it would not affect their future. And overall it would benefit us as a society by letting a lot more people have a higher education.