Is Free College a Good Idea?

     One of the promising policies that Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, made in his 2020 presidential run was to make college tuition free. He also promised that he wanted to erase the trillions of dollars of debt that carry on to millions of Americans. A Room for Debate article "Should College be Free?" addresses this issue with many points of view. There are a lot of good things that come with free college tuition as well as many bad things.

     I personally lean on the side of not having free college tuition for the simple fact that nothing is free and that trillions of taxpayer dollars are going to be spent. Higher taxes won't be the only negative to free college; another downside is that degrees would be far less valuable since so many people would be going. Another negative is that colleges would turn down even more students leading fewer people to go into college. When California lowered the price of community college, colleges turned down over 600,000 students.

     I'm not trying to act like the student debt crisis is not a big issue, in fact, it's a huge problem. All that I'm saying is that there are probably better options than making college tuition free. Maybe society can normalize that not everybody needs to go to college to become successful (of course there are many instances where it is necessary to do so such as becoming a medical professional). According to CNBC 1 in 5 college graduates don't use their degree in their current job.

     What do you think? Do you think that college tuition should be completely free? If so, explain why.