[su_heading size=”16″]The gov spends billions on financial aid and grants why not tuition?[/su_heading]
Throughout all my years in U.S. higher education, Americans’ obsession with sports as a part of schooling has always baffled me. Looking at the great monuments and stadiums built in the name of “school pride” is something that seems to further scholastic achievement in absolutely no way. Additionally, while we are focusing on football bowls and NCAA championships, our attention has been scarcely focused on how much money we as students pay for these constructs. Since someone has to pay for this self-glorification of universities, it comes as no surprise that the average U.S. college student graduates with both a diploma and $27,000 in debt.
I see two major problems in the way universities currently operate: First, administrations spend money on non-academic endeavors in the name of “making donors happy” and second, universities and the federal government are bleeding college students dry.
Don’t get me wrong it is not just sports. It is about the ridiculous sums we are willing to throw at incompetent administrators and coaches, as was the case not-so-long ago right here at UW. Or maybe we should call into question the luxury busses that we shuttle donors around in. All of this is happening while there has been a salary freeze for staffers on the university campus and budget cuts in almost every department.
The solution here is simple: stop spending money to make a small group of people happy. As a student body, we are grateful for the sums that donors have contributed. But when our education is suffering by making our instructors unhappy, dampening innovation in departments because of a lack of funds and ultimately forcing us down a path of debt, we have to say enough is enough.
But we cannot just stop here—and conservative readers, you might want to stop reading here—we also need to revolutionize the way we pay for school. Specifically, tuition should be free. Ah, socialism! Yes, yes it is. But that is what you get from someone who grew up in Germany with fantastic medical care.
Now that I said the bad s-word, let me explain how this could actually work. The Atlantic writer, Jordan Weissmann, explained in a Jan. 4 article that in 2012, the “federal government spent a whole $69 billion…on its hodgepodge of financial aid programs, such as Pell Grants for low-income students, tax breaks, work study funding.” According to the Institute of Education Sciences, this would more than cover the cost of tuition for all secondary education schools in the U.S. for that same year.
Instead of wasting all this taxpayer money on dysfunctional programs, the federal government should buy out all tuition costs for students attending college. Of course, there would have to also be a stricter admission process for students to be able to go to college. Additionally, we should encourage the idea of technical schools more where students, who just do not care for the theoretical approach of liberal arts, can focus on getting a real world, practical set of skills.
