11/1/16

Future U.S. President

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW,

Washington,

DC 20500

Dear future President of the United States of America,

Will your opinion of the issue of Free College really benefit American Citizens? Or will it only bring on more problems and hardships for students and taxpayers of the United States? This issue is important to me because I plan on going to college and I value the quality and availability of the education I receive. There are many problems that come with the idea of free college such as the fact that nothing can ever truly be free, and that implementing colleges only payed for by government funds would only strain the accessibility, value, and quality of public higher education.

The first main problem with the proposal of free public college is that free college isn’t actually free. Free college simply shifts costs from students to taxpayers. Placing the tuition cap at zero limits college spending to whatever the public is willing to invest. A national push for free college would strain public budgets leading to shortages rather than increased access. The state with public college costs the closest to zero in the nation, California, turned away 600,000 students during the recession due to a boom in enrollments and damaged state budget for higher education. I am willing to pay a higher percentage of college tuition if it means that that I am guaranteed to receive a properly funded education. It matters that college costs are not completely funded by the public because it can hurt the quality and accessibility of the education.

There are ways for fully paying paying off community college that are available for everyone. If you want a college education you have to work hard for it. One way of fully paying off college debt free is by joining the ROTC, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, which offers 6 years of military service for 4 years worth of college education. It is also possible to work your way through college with responsible financial decisions and leave with a reasonable amount of loans that can be payed off with aid of your new college degree. I think that with enough effort and smart financial decisions, that the cost of a college is well worth it for the profit you can make with a degree. It is possible to get a degree with value that is well worth it by working for it.

Free college plans only take the price of colleges as obstacles for students, ignoring the importance of a quality education. The biggest reason for investing in a college degree is the value of the skills and knowledge acquired. students who attend public four-year colleges with lower graduation rates are less likely to finish than similar peers who attend better school. I feel that the quality of the education I receive is more important than whether or not I have to pay for it. A investing in a better education is far better than settling for a poor education with a lower cost.

College should be considered an investment that can show profit with hard work, rather than unvaluable for the sake of being cheap. It is important that colleges be at least partly funded by students to ensure a valuable education that was worth the hard work. I want you, Future President, to stand against the push for “free” public college.