University Fees Should Be Scrapped

Its a sad case especially when one sees many talented students who have the POTENCY to pursue tertiary studies ending up in the streets selling drugs or getting involved in gang life. Many do it because they feel they dont see an end to their misery and financial burden and would rather steal from the rich to feed themselves even if it means ending someone life in return for her/his salvation.

University should be free for all. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, for the 2007-2008 year, the average student loan debt of graduating college seniors was about $23,000. This means that when a person graduates from college, instead of working to make money for their future, they are working to make money to pay back their past. True, an education allows for a better future, but so many students are stuck paying back loans for years after their graduation that they can’t do things that, such as travel, that students in other countries, where education is free can do. It is unfair that if one does not come from a wealthy family, they are stuck paying back loans for x number of years. While their friends who had their education paid have the opportunity to go doing things such as traveling, those who owe money are forced to find a job right away that they may not necessarily love, because they have to pay back their loans.

Free education enables everyone to have the opportunity to study. This means there would be more people going to universities. The outcome of this would be that in our society, more people will have higher degrees which means would be more people who are doctors, lawyers, nonprofit workers, teachers, business leaders etc. This has positive benefits. More doctors means more people who treat those who are sick. More teachers means, better quality of education for students. More nonprofit workers means more people who are trying to help and raise money for those who need it. When the number of people who get an education rises, the number of people who benefit from that persons education also rises. Therefore, free education will benefit our society because there will be more highly educated individuals who have the education and ability to help others.

In the United States higher education is so expensive that only people with wealthy families or scholarships can afford going to school. If you do not have money to pay you have to borrow money from the government which will give you a huge loan which you have to pay back after university is done. It is also important to remember the cost outside the school with housing and books. This is unfair for the people who do not have the family money or the wealth that other people have. This will lead to poverty in generations because your parents will not earn enough money to go to school, therefore you will not get education and have to say yes to a lower paid job and cannot pay for your children education again. If education is free everyone can go to school if they want to and that can help form the next generation too. If will strengthen families and the society. In the countries in Europe where education is free social background does not matter. If you have money and want to spend them on education you can choose to study at private universities that cost a lot of money. We live in a society where everyone should have equal rights, therefore education should be free.

Even though tuition fee is scrapped you will still have problems with paying for books, housing and food. When people talk about free education they forget such elements as housing and books. It is normal for a student from countries with free education in Europe to leave the university with a big loan. Education is indeed an investment and paying pack government the money you loaned to live while studying is reasonable. But if tuition fee is not scrapped a student will leave university with a double loan. It is also important to remember that people that do not study will work full time jobs and earn money, while students only have time to work part time jobs if even possible. Therefore people who do not study will earn a bigger amount of money the first years while people who choose to study do not earn so much money the first years. They also have to spend the paychecks paying books and housing and not before later on get the investment they spend years on getting. Tuition should be free and the students can pay for their books and housing themselves.

At the moment social mobility in the UK is declining According to a report by former health secretary Alan Milburn “Social mobility has slowed down in our country. Birth, not worth, has become more and more a determinant of people’s life chances.” This starts in universities and as a result goes on to apply through the rest of life. As a percentage of Cambridge university’s undergraduate population, there are fewer state-school students today than there were in 1980. The rest of the top universities are doing little better. Privately educated entrants into university should account for 7% of each universities intake but in the top universities it is often more than four times that. At Bristol it was 38.5 per cent, Nottingham 30.5 per cent, and Newcastle 28.9 per cent.[[Jeff Randall, How the class war backfired and put social mobility into retreat, The Telegraph, 30/7/09, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/5941721/How-the-class-war-backfired-and-put-social-mobility-into-retreat.html%5D%5D Unfortunately these top universities are often the only ones considered by the biggest companies when looking for new employees. Tuition fees are of course by no means the only reason for this decline in social mobility but it is a factor; make the poorest able to afford top universities again and they may well actually go to those universities.

A graduate tax would be a good way to potentially give universities more than they get from the current fees while getting rid of tuition fees. The contribution would depend directly on a person’s salary rather than just being a flat rate fare for services rendered over a short time. This would help to make the cost fairer as it would depend on what you got out of their degree. For example a person earning £40,000 would pay £125 per month. Over 20 years that could amount to £30,000.[[Shepard Jessica “Student leaders call for graduate tax to replace tuition fees: Graduates would contribute to a national tax out of their monthly salary over a twenty year period” Guardian Unlimited http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/10/nus-tuition-fees-graduate-tax Accessed 10.06.09]]. Although that sum is high even over the course of 20 years but show the possibilities of the tax and how it could bring in more money instead of universities rising their fares. The graduate tax would change as a person’s salary rises or falls over a twenty year so if a graduate finds him or herself out of work or in a low paid job they would not need to pay.

The rich should have to pay because it is the money they get, in large part, from the poor that allows them such a priveleged position. Where else would the money come from? Let us also not forget that the poor also pay taxes.

If it was not so a very definite elite class would emerge, becoming virtually impenetrable for all without. The facilitation of a path to higher education for lower income students is vital to maintaining, or even creating, a more balanced society.

But the government does benefit from people going to University. People who go to University will earn more and therefore they will pay more tax. It is in the government’s interests to pay for people to go to university. They should see it as their investment, not ours. Regardless of whether the loans are available or not, people do see the finances as a hindrance to their education. Many will think that their family cannot support themselves and so they need to earn money to keep their family afloat. If the Government made education free, then these people would be enabled to go to university and they will be able to get educated. Surely an educated nation is in the government’s benefit as well? Therefore, the investment yields a greater return for them on their capital.

And quite aside from the national benefits of an educated population, there are absolutely no guarantees of future profits comparable to the outrageous tuition costs of some universities (particularly in the US). President Obama paid back his student loans only after becoming a US Senator and publishing a best-selling book [[http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2008/04/09/michelle-obama-baracks-book-sales-paid-off-our-student-loans/]]. How many far less successful and wealthy alumni are saddled with a comparable debt?

Income is never guaranteed, while interest on student loans is guaranteed to accumulate.

The argument opposite seems to centre around two principal points, the first being that it is fun to be in debt. I don’t think anyone except a masochist would agree with that.

The second point they seem to be making is that debt teaches self-sufficiency. Which is fair enough, only university fees are so large that they cripple students financially for much of the early part of their working life. There is a difference between undergoing minor hardship to teach carefulness with money and being saddled with crippling debt for years.

So you’re saying that it’s worth being in debt just so that you can have an extra conversational topic?

People have conversations about natural disasters, homelessness and terrorist attacks that they see on the news, but that doesn’t mean we want these things to continue.

The argument that tuition fees are good because they improve the level of education received completely neglects those people who are unable to attend university at all because they cannot afford it. The selection process must be merit-based in order to keep standards up. It is simply wrong to allow students whose parents have money to spare on a college education to continue to receive have such an advantage. The problem should be solved by the government making higher education a bigger priority when deciding what to spend the budget on, not by expecting poor students to pay.

The government would have to fund them more and they would have to because how many less trained workers can we have.

Attending university is probably the biggest decision most young people make for themselves, and most think very deeply about it. Students drop out of university for many reasons – often personal or emotional. If anything, adding a huge fee to the process of starting university would just increase the pressure on students and make any problems worse. Also, it is not clear that what makes money is necessarily the same as what is ‘good for society’. Nursing is very important for example, but very poorly paid compared to ‘marketing’. Do we really want to direct people away from such important jobs? And many subjects such as art may not be profitable, but still possess great cultural value which is important in other ways.

It is not clear that ‘too many people’ go to universities. The problem of unemployment is as much to do with businesses and the economy as education. Also, using fees to put people off applying to university is a clumsy and unfair method. Rather than help to decide who ‘should’ go to university, it means that particular types of people – normally those from low-income or poor backgrounds – are less able or likely to go. At the same time more well-off students who can afford to study can continue to apply regardless. This takes us back to the bad old days where your wealth decided your chance of success in life. Individuals should be the ones who decide if they go to university – not the Government, and not how much money their parents earn.

University might not be as essential as say learning to write – but it is increasingly important in the modern world. Jobs in developed nations are becoming much more specialised and service based. You cannot (for example) just turn up at a computer software company and ‘learn the trade’ like you could at a coal mine in years past. Skills needed today are more complex and depend on scientific and mathematical knowledge, and/or an ability to think about abstract concepts. Such understanding can only be taught in higher education institutions. The point of education is to allow opportunity. As opportunities change, so must our education systems.

University graduates might be more succesful in general – but that does not mean everyone who attends university becomes wealthy and well-employed. Many thousands of graduates cannot find jobs when they leave university and many more do not ever find the dream career they hoped for. A higher education does not guarantee of success and so it is unfair that those who do not succeed are still left with a huge fee or debt when they leave university. The basis of taxation is the income you actually have, not what you ‘should’ have. As high-earning graduates already pay big sums in income tax, the system is very fair already.

Universities have only limited control over how their students spend their spare time. Provided that they give their students a high quality education, and only award degrees to those who deserve it then they are doing their job properly. Also, the idea that the taxpayer is generously funding students is misleading. Most students receive most of their income from loans (which have to be paid back), and many students live in situations of quite serious poverty. Those that are lucky enough to have spare money often earn this by having a part-time job whilst studying. If they choose to spend their own money on fun and socialising, that is none of our business.

Ultimately, if indeed these students ‘reap the rewards’ with better jobs they will be paying considerably more taxes and usually claiming less benefits. Furthermore they will probably be helping the economy in less direct ways – providing better health services, helping businesses become more successful or perhaps even going into teaching themselves.

The government needs people with degrees and will end up benefiting from their hard work – they just don’t want to help them on their way. Funnily enough, the nation wasn’t bankrupted when the current generation of politicians were greasing their way through Oxbridge, and if they’d left the door open behind them I think it’s pretty unlikely we’d have collapsed into anarchy now. There may be more students these days, but ultimately that will mean more taxes for the government as many of those the students end up getting better paying jobs.

Not every University is taking students with 3 D’s and an E. Especially if a student wants to study a difficult subject. But many students, who have the ability to learn, willing to learn and gain everything, just can’t afford it. Wouldn’t the Government benefit from having more successful people, who pay taxes?

I think that uni should be free, but the “taking in” rules should be harder.