One of the hot topics among millennials today is the idea of a free college education. Bernie Sanders is probably the greatest advocate of this idea in today’s political playing field. I do not think there are many people who would refuse a free college education outright, but there are still people who feel that working for something on their own is important and I commend them. I would love if my college education was paid for. I believe that I have worked hard for it, and I feel deserving of such a reward, but I do not believe that everyone deserves a free college education.
I am not going to argue about how college tuition is going to be paid for. This is simply about the concept itself. Does everyone deserve a free college education? Is higher education a right? The answer is no, but I say this with a grain of salt. Not everyone deserves free higher education outright, but anyone can earn it.
Those of us who make the grades in high school, have the extracurriculars, come from underprivileged places or low-income families deserve free college tuition. People who deserve free college education should have it, but I feel there are plenty of people on this campus that squander their time here and do not care for their education. Those people should not receive a free college education.
There are two other ways of approaching this situation: the cost of college itself and what it means for vocational careers. The average cost of four-year public universities rose 24 percent from 2005-2011 and another 13 percent from 2011-2015, according to collegeboard.org. Maybe the issue is that universities have become too much of a business and less of a center of learning. Truth be told, I do not know enough to make grandiose assumptions about how much this school makes in profit, but I find myself constantly criticizing the amount of new construction and renovations that go on college campuses all over the country that do not benefit academics in any way.
A second issue is somewhat of a far-fetched generalization, but a generalization shared by others. If college became free, blue-collar vocational careers would be further looked down upon and likely would take a hit in employment. We often look down upon electricians, plumbers, landscapers and construction workers because of their lack of a formal college education, but in reality many of these jobs can be extremely lucrative. Some of these people do have technical degrees that would be achieved more easily with free tuition, but many of these schools already have extremely low tuition compared to most universities or there are easy ways of obtaining scholarships for these programs.
Think about it — if you had a choice between going to a free university and studying something like English, medicine or culinary arts or going to a technical college and studying auto mechanics, which would you choose?
Dalton Capps is a senior history major from Coldwater, Mississippi.
