Nationwide College Debt

One of the current most controversial topics, especially last presidential election
cycle, is how should America handle the large amount of college debt many
students find themselves. The average student loan debt per borrower
is $38,792, which is clearly a lot of money. But whose fault does this rest on:
students, their parents, the government, the colleges? How could we even fix
this problem: the government paying for portions of student debt, completely
free college tuition, better interest programs? There are a lot of questions around
this topic, and no easy answer. My goal is to outline the positives and negatives
of the most radical approach being the government paying for student’s ‘free’
tuition.

The first topic is the debt students exist in. Obviously making college tuition
free would greatly reduce this debt. It would allow thousands of students who
cannot afford to go to college currently have the opportunity to receive higher
education. The opposite side of this coin is that tuition free college does not
simply make college completely free. Tuition costs only account for 39.5% of
average total college costs. This means students would still more than likely
have debt from college, even if it is significantly cheaper.

Of course the money to pay for free tuition does not come out of nowhere; it
comes out of taxpayers pockets. Bernie Sander’s free college program(again not
free college free tuition) would cost $47 billion per year, which would either
mean an increase in taxes or money be diverted from other areas. Another
argument is why should people who pursue non-college education jobs(anything
from restaurant workers to the trades) pay for others to go to college, when
college is really a place that allows someone to get higher paying jobs? In other
words, the workers that make less initially would help pay for other people to
get into higher paying jobs. It may seem unfair to many if that was the case. But
then again, paying off college tuition has yielded financial benefits before. GI
Bill participants ended up generated billions of extra dollars and the government
got an eventual return of $6.90 for every dollar spent giving veterans college
access.

One final point to mention is that

there is the potential that many
students would go to college for
a year with the wrong intentions,
waste tax payers’ dollars, and
then drop out. And that is not a
baseless claim either; “Under
California’s community college
fee waiver program, over 50% of
the state’s community college
students attended for free (before
a 2017 program change), but
only 6% of all California
community college students
completed a career technical
program and fewer than 10% completed a two-year degree in six years.”
The goal of this was to list out the pros and cons and then allow ourselves to
come to a decision for ourselves. Could the government paying off college
tuition result in freeing students and giving more opportunities, or would it
ultimately not even solve the issue and result in money being wasted?