Why should vulnerable, young students have to pay thousands of dollars to pursue a higher and more in-depth education? In the U.S., most serious jobs and best paying jobs require education beyond high school. Many believe that in order to succeed in life, you need to go to college, but not everyone can afford to pay upwards of $30,000 a year for four years or more of higher education. 

Many students in high school would also be considered “first generation” if no one in their family went to college, making it harder to navigate and pay for school. Those who believe that a higher education should be a privilege instead of a right should consider the fact that there are adults who have always wanted a career and a college education, but were not able to have one due to the unnecessarily high cost of universities. As well as children who do not have enough money to attend college, who grew up in poverty, or because their parents did not think about college funds before their child was born.

A research study showed that college dropout rates declined between 1990 and 2020, though they remained high, with about 39 percent of first-time, full-time bachelor’s degree students not finishing within eight years in more recent years. This is due to the rising cost of college, tuition and housing included. Students in college also have to pay for schooling material and other necessities like laundry and food.

Yes, this gives young adults an insight on adulthood, but adulting should not come with a lack of access to higher education. Older generations have complained about the lack of education that the younger generation have, because they haven’t gone to college, or have dropped out—but college in their day wasn’t nearly as expensive as it is now. College should be accessible and sustainable for anyone and everyone, because many people need an education beyond high school. 

Students also see college as a chance to reach their full potential or goals, and others use it as a way to get far from their household or families. While the opinion still stands that college should be free, universities would need funding for things like housing, classrooms, materials, and other expenses.—but students should not have to be the ones paying for those things when all they want to do is learn. A solution to this would be government funding. The government should be providing for college if they truly want all people to experience new things, have higher opportunities, and expand knowledge. With help from the government, more people would actually succeed in college, and not be left with a lifetime of debt, simply because they wanted to have an actual job that would set them up for retirement in the future. 

Other students say that they should not have to pay a million dollars just to try hard for a career that isn’t guaranteed in the future because if college students have already paid loads of money for classes related to their career goals, just for them to not have much luck within those careers, then they’d be in millions of debt with nothing to show for it. Also, many majors in college are deemed to be quite useless in the “real world,” so students who take those classes would likely be set up for failure with tons of money owed to their bank. This would damage their credit score as well, preventing them from buying houses, cars, or apartments. The expensive cost of college would also force students to take out loans that would take a very long time to pay back, leaving them in a deeper hole of debt. 

Many colleges will reach out to high school students through emails, texts, and calls, in a way as try to persuade students to join their college—but what students would want to pay $50-$100 for application fees, go through hours of applications, just to be rejected or unable to pay for their classes after the first semester. 

College should be free for everyone, because everybody deserves an education. No matter if they are able to afford it or not—because as more jobs are requiring college degrees, more educated people will be needed to fill them. Without college, people won’t be able to do most of the things they’d want to do in life, due to serious, well-paying jobs, demanding degrees and PhDs.