The concept of tuition-free public college is not as radical as it first may seem. It follows the same argument for free public education that we all utilized from elementary through high school—that everyone deserves the right to an education regardless of income. In the present saturated job market where most entry level positions require at the minimum a bachelor’s degree, a high school diploma does not carry the weight it once did in the 20th century. Our country must adjust to current conditions that include a discouraging job market for those without a college degree and the exponentially rising cost of attending college, and make public colleges tuition-free.
The cost of a higher education prevents hundreds of thousands of young people from attending college, and the millions of others who do go to college leave with a mountain of debt. In 2015, 38 million Americans owed more than $1.3 trillion in student loans. The cost of an undergraduate education is twelve times higher than it was just 35 years ago. What does that mean? A hard-working student can no longer work their way through college, and working full-time for a single summer will not even come close to paying for a year of tuition, let alone room and board and other fees, at a public university.
There are examples of tuition-free public schools in the United States that existed within our parents or grandparents’ lifetimes, as well as examples from around the globe. The University of New York System (SUNY) remained tuition-free until 1963, and the University of California System was tuition-free for over a hundred years up until the 1980s. A few of the other countries we can look to for examples are Germany, Panama, Turkey, Spain, France and Brazil. While we view the idea of tuition-free college as revolutionary because it is unfamiliar to our generation in the U.S., the idea is a highly functioning reality in many other places.
Student debt keeps young people from buying homes, getting married, starting businesses, pursuing public or nonprofit careers and continually challenges career and social opportunities. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, for the first time in the modern era more 18-34-year-olds are living at home than in any other living arrangement. Why? Massive student loans play a large role in this. TICAS reported seven in 10 seniors from public and nonprofit colleges had student loan debt, averaging close to $29,000 per borrower. As a result of this, Time Magazine found a decrease in bachelor’s degree attainment for low and moderate income students since 2000.
No bright student should be prevented from attending college based on their financial situation. And yet at this moment hundreds of thousands of high school students are contemplating whether continuing their education is fiscally possible, let alone if it is worth decades of financial burden. The opportunities produced from a college degree should not become the exclusive privilege of the rich or extremely smart, but need to continue to exist as a feasible option for all people through tuition-free public college.