The views that are expressed in the upcoming section do not represent the Clarion or Sinclair Community College. This paper, along with Sinclair, is nonpartisan. It does not endorse any candidate. The opinions given represent the viewpoint of the author who wrote the article.
Imagine a world in five years where every college student receives a free education. Students can go to the college or university of their dreams and not pay any tuition.
Of course, you’ll wake up and discover that was all a nice fantasy where things were free with no fine print whatsoever.
Whenever someone sees the word “free” in a political campaign, they should immediately be wary. Nothing is ever free. Someone, somewhere, will have to pay for it.
According to Clinton, her plan will be fully paid for by limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers. Somehow, she is going to make college “free” by taking it out of high-income people. That way, when a student graduates and applies for a job, there are less job opportunities because those people were so busy paying for that student’s college, they cannot afford to hire them.
Also, keep in mind that free college will cost thousands and thousands of dollars and it doesn’t make sense that all of the money to pay for it will somehow come out of high-income people’s pockets. More than likely, if Clinton is elected and her plan goes into place, it’ll start coming out of your income taxes.
All of that student loan debt will just “disappear” as well. If, after 20 years, a student’s debt is not paid off, then it will all be forgiven. Just like that, thousands of dollars a student owes the government will just magically go away. So, in reality, if a student doesn’t want to pay their loans, Clinton says “Hey! Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.”
However, for all good and nice students who would like to pay off their student debt, they can take a payroll deduction at their job, so that way they make less money, while paying off loan debt and trying to survive in the real world. Let the government control the money they take out of paychecks, that’s a good idea.
Clinton says that the states will have to step up and invest in colleges to help pay for this as well. As if states haven’t been investing in higher education already, they have to do it even more.
Clinton raises some very important questions. College is too expensive. It needs to be fixed, but “free” in which the student ends up paying for it somewhere else, is not viable or realistic. Citizens should not trust magician politics where everything is free and the average citizen doesn’t have to pay for it, that’s just not how politics will ever work. Everyone has to pay for something.
There is one problem that Clinton hasn’t talked about fixing, FAFSA. Many students who have filed for FAFSA will know the problems that arise from it. I once spoke to a student who was once told by a FAFSA worker to lie and say she was pregnant, just to get more money. She didn’t, by the way.
The government is willing to help, as long as the students fits within the certain requirements. If a student does not fit in their nice little boxes, then they can just lie about it. Free college and no debt will do the exact same thing. If the government can’t be trusted with a decent program to help students, how do they plan to make college free?
Many students work hard for their education and they value it, yet if a college education is so highly valued, why would we give it away for free?
Bernie Sanders liked to point out Germany because, in 2014, they started providing free college education for both local and international students.
What Sanders and Clinton didn’t realize is that Germany doesn’t place as high of a value on a college education. They can get well paying jobs without an education, whereas the United States has placed such an emphasis on education that most people cannot get a good job without it.
In this era, everyone needs a college education in the United States. Americans have placed so much value on a degree that it has dried up student’s wallets and their futures with mountains of student debt. However, if Sanders would like to compare to Germany, he should realize that more Americans go to college than Germans which drains out the United States money more than it does Germany’s.
In the United States, 43 percent of citizens have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. In Germany, only 28 percent have a Bachelor’s degree or higher.
America is not Germany. It’s education system doesn’t run the same and their workforce doesn’t have a high value on educations and the United States does. The only thing a “free” college will do is take more money out of the economy and out of hard working people’s income tax.
Clinton recognizes a problem and is at least trying to fix it. Donald Trump has stayed silent on education and with the election coming up, no one really knows his plan on education.
However, “free” college in the United States is not realistic. It sounds really great to all of us college students, but it isn’t really free. It will only end up hurting the people who thought it would help them.
In every election season, be aware of politicians who promise the world. It’s the election and they are trying to gain a vote. Is free college likely to happen in 2021? No, probably not. Is it likely that it will make the American workforce the most educated in the world? No, that title currently belongs to Russia, who does not offer free college, just a more inexpensive one.
Free college isn’t the solution to a broken down education system. Reasonable pricing and reasonable federal aid will actually be able to help fix the problems.
Laina Yost
Managing Editor