Should governments offer college and university education free of charge?
Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela.
The governments should provide college and university education free of charge to all the students as surely it has more benefits than drawbacks.
Due to free college and university education, a lot of people whose family earnings are below the poverty line will be able to send their children to colleges and universities as they will be able to afford it. Many poor families restrain their children from pursuing higher studies because of unaffordability. But surely the government of the country should have enough maintained funds to make it free. In addition, it will also help in reducing the family cycle of poverty in which a laborer’s son is made to do labor work at a very young age and he continues to do so as he grows up and in the process is not able to learn anything even though he may have the talent and he continues to so with his own son and hence the cycle continues.
Since a lot of people would be able to pursue higher studies the number of people who would be contributing to the nation in a lot of ways in fields like Engineering, medical science, research, and development, etc to name a few would also increase and it would indirectly help in increasing the rate of development of the country. The faster a country develops the faster the lives of its people become sophisticated in terms of transportation, communication, quality of life, etc. But what might happen if not handled properly is that if a lot of people would have a university degree there would be a shortage of low skilled labor, there would be a lot of job seekers than job creators and Japan is a really good example of this. A person having a university degree would not do menial work at any cost. But this can be tackled through automation, which in turn would generate more job opportunities and this is what Japan doing right now automating everything it can.
There will be a lot of people who will feel that if we make college and university education free for all the students would stop taking university education for granted. Even though it is a hypothetical situation and if we clearly think about it, it might be true in the sense that a lot of unwarranted students would get an admit who just want to get a hang of college life. But on the contrary, this would also make some privileged parents rethink their children’s career choices who would always want their children to get a degree and then follow their passion if they have any left. They would certainly allow their children to pursue fields that do not require a formal university education because it would become very common to have degrees and they won’t carry that much value.
Free college and university education will always open new doors of development for a country by opening up new opportunities that people of a country can take advantage of. Although the government would have to cleverly plan the reforms of free education so that it is not being misused it surely will benefit society and its people.
