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Free College Tuition Essay

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The words “free college tuition” spark interest in any college student with accumulating debt. In fact, this topic is so incredibly supported that Bernie Sanders implemented it as a core interest in his 2016 campaign. Once Hillary Clinton became the Democratic nominee, she decided to take it on herself with an extensive plan that guaranteed students free tuition. Unsurprisingly, free tuition resonates extremely well within the student demographic. To forty million Americans, free tuition eliminates the largest problem for students: debt (Hess, 2017). However, free college tuition generates the inverse of what these low-income and middle-income students believe. In fact, free college cripples them from multiple perspectives; students will end up spending more financially, will be less likely to graduate with a degree, and will be subjected to more inequality and less exposure.

It is important to consider who truly benefits from free college tuition, as it is not low-income students. In fact, free college tuition creates a larger rift between the dollar values low-income students have in comparison to high-income students. According to a study from NPSAS (Chingos, 2012), a government-funded, student-study organization, rich students will receive 24% more in dollar value if the establishment of free college tuition. This is interpreted as a tradeoff; free college tuition will eliminate tuition, but out-of-pocket costs for low-income families will increase to $17.8 billion dollars annually which grants cannot cover. Rich students would be able to pay off these costs because of that increase in dollar value. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore that low-income students truly would not benefit from free college tuition, as they do not have the same privileges as rich students do.
These analyses are not just hypothetical data, however. A test orchestrated in Scotland by Lucy H. Blackburn, the Head of Higher Education at the Scottish Government, proved the existing gap between low-income students and high-income students (Blackburn, 2014, p. 1-5). Scotland is one of the couple European countries that have no college tuition.The increase in a number of loans offered inevitably increased debt in a way that the

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