Just Say No to Free College

Photo By: 
https://edreformnow.org/debt-free-college/

Photo By: https://edreformnow.org/debt-free-college/

Anthony Garcia, Editor in Chief

Sure free college sounds amazing right. Free college would either save money in your parent’s bank account or give students a headstart out into the real world for those who need to take out student loans.

My opinion at this time that there is no solid plan that is capable of giving students free college. Norway for instance is a nation with free college, but the tax rate on average compared to the tax rate in the United States is 5 percent higher.

Theoretically, students could get free college tuition for as long as you attend college, and then students would pay 5 percent higher taxes for the rest of their adult life.

Not to mention that the free college proposed by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s is only allowed for certain families with distinct income. According to CNN Money, the Sanders plan also wouldn’t even cover room and board.

Donald Trump has not yet proposed a free college plan, I would like to see a proposal for free college from both sides as long as they are realistic.

Hillary Clinton’s plan says that any family making over $125,000 year will not qualify for free college. As an example say there is a family that makes $135,000 a year but plans to send three children through college, how would that be fair.

A loophole in the proposal is a husband and wife both work and are slightly over the free college line, who’s to say one of them shouldn’t quit their job in order to receive free college for their children and save money in the process

Take into consideration that if colleges were aware that the government was going to pay for tuition no matter the cost they would raise the price of college for profit. Even if Clinton decided that she would only pay the current amount for tuition she would still be in a pickle, college does not cost the same everywhere you go.

Say A student made it into two colleges, college A which is in state ($25,000) and college B, which is out of state ($50,000) and the student decided they wanted to go out of state because its by the beach, what a waste of money.

The Sanders plan would cost $75 Billion per year, the only means to pay for it is taxing the rich, who made their money just as fairly as everyone else, or digging into the current U.S. debt $19.5 trillion. It would be extremely unrealistic for a project on this scale worth billions of dollars wouldn’t somehow go over budget.

The proposed plan suggests that the states pay one third of the money towards free college, then the federal government will pay for the other two thirds with its tax on Wall Street.

Getting the government involved will eventually lead to a larger government involvement in our college education system, and could even begin to make college political.

Students could go to college, party, and then skip class, all for free under this plan.

It is not fair for there to be a cut off on who gets free college and who doesn’t. Either everyone should have free college from poor to rich or no one should at all.

The idea a fantasy, at least at this point. It makes sense to try to help disadvantaged children achieve a higher education.

But the fact is that there is not a solid plan that would be effective enough to be put into action yet. Until a better plan is proposed there is no fair way to proceed.

This is a simple case of easier said than done and both Clinton and Sanders will need to get more realistic before their plans take off the ground.