Free College

With a political season upon us and discussions of free college has come up. I know that I have discussed this before, but I feel like I need to bring it up again.

The entire approach to education in America right now relies on controlling the government controlling the educational process. All learning is expected to occur within the confines of a restrictive schooling environment. Most of society has changed to accommodate this approach, and any learning that takes place elsewhere no longer counts for anything. My views directly oppose this mentality. I believe that we need to open up education and become more tolerant of learning that occurs outside the schools.

We are already making a hard push to ensure everyone become a mindless product of our K-12 system. Although there is still a gap in performance between the rich and the poor, schools are now highly accessible to everyone. If you do not have resources and seriously want to utilize the schools prior to college, success should be easily within reach. All you have to do is put in the effort.

Take a look at what has happened as we have improved accessibility of the schools. Businesses looking for employees to hire in more desirable jobs don't want to look through too many applications. Schooling can be an easy filter to utilize. Jobs that used to require a high school diploma started demanding college degrees.

Because businesses now frequently prohibit employment for those who only made it through high school, their wages have to show enough appeal. College graduates want to make their money back. These jobs saw increased wages while wages elsewhere stagnated. Since the poor couldn't afford college, they were forced to take low-paying jobs.

Granted, there are exceptions. Some people are rewarded in a way that being poor puts them at an advantage relating in no way to their abilities or work ethics. Ultimately, these don't have much of an impact on most people. It might be nice to periodically hear a story about someone climbing from a poor family to prosperity, but the overall impact has been to disadvantage the poor.

Since college appears to be the primary gap right now between the rich and the poor, a lot of people feel that the logical solution is to help the poor receive college indoctrination. There is a big problem with this argument. Look what happened when we improved accessibility of the K-12 system to the poor. It actually harmed the poor by increasing the schooling demands for the kinds of jobs that used to be accessible to high school graduates.

What we have seen is the development of a buy-in model for the more desirable jobs. The more desirable a job is, the more you have to pay for the schooling to stand out. The higher costs to enter a field drives wages up. Wages are among business expenses that are passed on to the consumer. This increases the cost of living for everyone. It does nothing to help those who struggle financially. Meanwhile, a high school diploma has been seriously devalued. Graduating high school is no longer sufficient for anyone who wants to enter a decent job.

If we made college free, we would see a similar pattern. The less desirable jobs requiring a college degree would see stagnant wages. The more desirable jobs would require higher schooling expenses to stand out. This could be in the form of more prestigious schools or graduate schools. The more desirable jobs would see pay increases, and the gap between the rich and the poor would only increase.

In addition to financial resources, time needs to be taken into consideration. People who lack money are less likely to be willing to delay entry into the job market. People who have financial resources to fall back onto can more easily justify going to college.

Not all proposals have been about totally free college. I have heard proposals to make community colleges free and to reduce costs for in-state tuition. These proposals are not nearly as scary, but they maintain the same kinds of flaws. The jobs the government is helping people to reach will either see stagnant wages or stronger schooling requirements that would no longer be attainable through a community college.

Of course, we need to address the most overlooked component of free college. There is no such thing. The money has to come from somewhere. In order for any of these proposals to work, we would all have to chip in to pay for it. This is not cheap. Life will become more expensive, and the rich benefit the most. The poor will face stagnant wages in a more expensive world.

There's one more thing that I feel needs to be addressed. Schooling is a highly inefficient approach to education. Any responsible individual should be able to outperform the colleges by taking full charge over their own educations. The best education anyone can receive is outside of the schools. The model that we have in place does not accept any education that occurs free from the schooling process. We have become completely intolerant of independent learning. Giving the schools more control over the educational process will ultimately harm educational opportunities for Americans.

Free college might seem like a good idea, but it is one of the dumbest moves that we can make for our country right now. If ultra-liberals get their way, we will all be forced to pay to help out the rich and promote intolerance of all forms of independent learning. Nobody who knows anything about education would ever support such a ridiculous idea.