Free Cost Benefit Analysis

An educated society is a productive society. As Thomas Jefferson said, “It is safer to have the whole people respectably enlightened than a few in a high state of science and the many in ignorance.” America has long been run by its people, however we need to be able to trust the people of our country. Today the total of student debt has risen to more than 1.1 trillion dollars. This is because the cost of tuition has risen considerably over the past 10 years and more students than ever are attending college. In fall 2015, about 50.1 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools, this is an increase of 31.9 students since 2007 (Weissman). The reason the tuition has risen so dramatically is because the lack of state funding going into colleges. There is a way to eliminate student debt for almost everybody and that is to make college free to the public. …show more content…
Many European countries like Germany, Finland, and Sweden already offer free college. How can free college be possible for America? The federal government is already spending the money that could be used to subsidize free tuition. Students paid just under $60 billion in tuition to attend state institutions of higher learning in 2012, however the government gave out over $77 billion worth of tax breaks and federal grants (Weissman). Making college free is all a matter of shifting the way the government spends its money. The money is already here, however it is not being used in a way that makes college more affordable, or free. With the money that's either going to private colleges, or being paid to the public sector via tax breaks, we could probably make tuition at public institutions either free, or ridiculously cheap. These institutions educate over 76% of american undergraduates (Goldrick-Rab). Free college could be possible if the government wanted to make it