Source Findings

All the articles that argued about free college had a greater amount of negatives to the issue than positives.

The two articles I found that were for free public college were Fran Cubberley’s “The Reality of Free Community College Tuition” and Tressie Cottom’s “Why Free College is Necessary.” Both listed one to a couple of problems of free college, but both still insisted on the proposal. Cubberley realizes that maintaining quality and staff will be difficult without planning ahead financially, but still believes that it is a benefit because students who find it more worth their time to work will be able to attain an education with no cost, abling them to expand and to explore different career paths. Cottom, after listing downsides to free college, still also advocates for this proposal because even if it is not completely possible in her perspective, it at least encourages people to discuss the worth and value of higher education.

The rest of the articles I read were quite negative towards free college. When looking at the European example of free college, much of the burden is laid on taxpayers to help fund for free college, which, as an American, taxes are one of the greatest things Americans hate. In both the articles I read on European free college, both held in their titles that college isn’t actually free. Christopher Denhart uses the example of Germany and shows that Germany has not only one of the highest taxes, but also one of the lower on-time graduation rates. Abby Jackson agrees with these statistics in her article “‘Free’ College in Europe Isn’t Really Free”. This shows how “free” is not actually free because the costs just get distributed elsewhere to fund for “free” entities. The burden is laid on someone else and in this case, the taxpayer.

(source)

Adding onto the list of problems, Cubberley mentions that community colleges must effectively manage their finances to maintain quality and hire more staff. Anya Kamenetz in her article “Fact-Check: Bernie Sanders Promises Free College. Will It Work?” argues that having more people go to college does not necessarily mean that America will have a more educated work force. Kamenez pulls out statistics to show that America is in the middle of most educated work force and there are countries that have and don’t have free college above and below it. This proves that having free college does not directly correlate with a more educated work force. Also, one could disregard all this is say that money isn’t the main problem as to why people aren’t going to college. Cottom argues that it’s the college standards of grades and scores that keep students from attending college. This especially affects low income families when they do not value higher education as much, so the children are not brought up in an environment where school is important. This leads to lower grades and scores and result in low college admission. Money is evidently not the only problem, but one could argue for whether it is the most prominent problem or not.

Works Cited

Cottom, Tressie Mcmillan. “Why Free College is Necessary”. Dissent 62.4 (2015): 115-117. Print.

Cubberley, Fran. “The Reality of Free Community College Tuition”. Journal of College Admission Issue 277 (2015): 21-23. Print.