should college education be for all essay

Not Every Student Should Go to College. And That’s OK

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Forty years ago 32 percent of counselors and teachers advised all students to go to college. Just 10 years later, in 1990, that percentage had doubled with roughly two-thirds of educators recommending college for all. Despite a recent surge in popularity for career and technical education, signs indicate that the college recommendation trend has increased over the last generation.

All that college-going advice may do harm in ways most adults in the lives of teenagers hadn’t realized. Research we conducted over the past several years suggests that a “college for all” message causes far too many students from all demographics to make choices that result in failure.

Instead of forcing college on students, educators would do better to encourage them to consider more than one pathway into a good life. Some pathways will include college now or later and some not. Educators also have a responsibility to help create those pathways, and students’ choices rather than their backgrounds should determine which they take.

Students who attend college for extrinsic reasons suffer poor outcomes.

In our research, we collected and analyzed more than 200 stories from students about their postsecondary education choices and surveyed over 1,000 more students to understand what caused them to enroll in college, both two- and four-year institutions, as well as some coding bootcamps and shorter graduate programs. Our participants were roughly representative of the population of students that attend college in the United States across gender, racial, and ethnic lines. Forty-six percent were first-generation college students, meaning neither of their parents had completed a bachelor’s degree. Eighteen percent had at least one child, and 60 percent lived in households with incomes that placed them in the bottom three socio-economic quintiles.

We learned that a significant number of students from all backgrounds enroll in college to do what’s expected of them or to help them get away from a bad circumstance in their lives. These students go to college not because they want the college experience or because of what college will help them obtain. In other words, they are motivated by external factors not internal goals. They choose college because it is a socially acceptable answer to what they are doing next.

Students who attend college for extrinsic reasons suffer poor outcomes. According to our research, 74 percent of those who attended college to “do what was expected of them” dropped out or transferred. Of those who went to college “to get away,” over half had left the school they were attending without a degree at the time we talked to them.

One student we talked to, who was the first in her family to attend college, chose college to get away from a bad relationship with her stepdad. She enrolled in a college three hours away from home—even though it didn’t have the courses of study in which she was interested. Once there, she took a heavier-than-usual course load first semester, partied hard, and found herself on academic probation.

Things improved a little second semester, but the improvement was not enough to justify the money she was spending on tuition, she thought. She still struggled with time management and a nagging sense that she didn’t know why she was enrolled. So with $40,000 in federal and private student loans outstanding, she dropped out, returned home, mended things with her family, and started to find jobs to help pay off the debt.

Too many students go to college not knowing what they want to get out of it or how to make it work for them. Committing to a four-year school and taking on lots of debt when they lack passion and focus for the endeavor is risky, particularly given the grim college completion and student debt statistics.

Over 40 percent of first-time, full-time students who started college in the fall of 2012 failed to graduate from four-year programs within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Non-completers not only lose out on the benefits of a college degree, but also face increased debt without increased earnings. Non-completers have a three-fold higher risk of default than completers, according to the Center for American Progress.

Instead of adding to the pressure around college, which parents often fuel, high school educators should be the first line of defense for students who might benefit more from another path. Yes, educators must avoid the low expectations that direct students away from college because of their family’s income, their race, or their ethnicity. Instead, they should encourage all students to reflect on their goals and explore more than one pathway to purpose and success.

One way to help is through courses that are now emerging to give students structured opportunities to discover what drives them. But high schools should go further. They must counter the narrowing of the curriculum over the last couple decades caused by an overemphasis on test results and the decrease in career and technical education pathways in many schools. Extracurricular activities, experiential learning, and opportunities to build relationships with adults outside of school through real-world projects can help students discover their strengths and interests. Rather than marginalize these opportunities, schools should integrate them into every student’s program.

Our research in no way implies that college is a one-time decision. Just because college isn’t the right step now

for a student doesn’t mean it will never be the right step. College and, more to the point, education can help bring a lifetime of happiness, as studies have documented . But that education has to be at the right time and in the right circumstance.

If students aren’t yet ready, then taking a gap year can be a smart move. The stereotype of rich kids gallivanting around Europe is outmoded. An increasing number of programs offer gap-year experiences with financial aid so that all students can partake of them. Counselors and teachers should help students explore these opportunities, which are filled with immersive activities that help students learn about themselves and, in many cases, earn money through holding a series of jobs. This can make a gap year considerably more affordable than college.

Far better than a monolithic college-for-all vision is for individuals to know where they are in their lives, what they want, and how to articulate it. Only then can we ensure that education delivers on its promise of helping people build their passions, fulfill their human potential, and live a lifetime of productive struggle and happiness.

A version of this article appeared in the March 11, 2020 edition of Education Week as The Danger of ‘College for All’

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College & Careers

Tuition-free college is critical to our economy

Morley Winograd and Max Lubin

November 2, 2020, 13 comments.

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To rebuild America’s economy in a way that offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, federal support for free college tuition should be a priority in any economic recovery plan in 2021.

Research shows that the private and public economic benefit of free community college tuition would outweigh the cost. That’s why half of the states in the country already have some form of free college tuition.

The Democratic Party 2020 platform calls for making two years of community college tuition free for all students with a federal/state partnership similar to the Obama administration’s 2015 plan .

It envisions a program as universal and free as K-12 education is today, with all the sustainable benefits such programs (including Social Security and Medicare) enjoy. It also calls for making four years of public college tuition free, again in partnership with states, for students from families making less than $125,000 per year.

The Republican Party didn’t adopt a platform for the 2020 election, deferring to President Trump’s policies, which among other things, stand in opposition to free college. Congressional Republicans, unlike many of their state counterparts, also have not supported free college tuition in the past.

However, it should be noted that the very first state free college tuition program was initiated in 2015 by former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican. Subsequently, such deep red states with Republican majorities in their state legislature such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas have adopted similar programs.

Establishing free college tuition benefits for more Americans would be the 21st-century equivalent of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration initiative.

That program not only created immediate work for the unemployed, but also offered skills training for nearly 8 million unskilled workers in the 1930s. Just as we did in the 20th century, by laying the foundation for our current system of universal free high school education and rewarding our World War II veterans with free college tuition to help ease their way back into the workforce, the 21st century system of higher education we build must include the opportunity to attend college tuition-free.

California already has taken big steps to make its community college system, the largest in the nation, tuition free by fully funding its California Promise grant program. But community college is not yet free to all students. Tuition costs — just more than $1,500 for a full course load — are waived for low-income students. Colleges don’t have to spend the Promise funds to cover tuition costs for other students so, at many colleges, students still have to pay tuition.

At the state’s four-year universities, about 60% of students at the California State University and the same share of in-state undergraduates at the 10-campus University of California, attend tuition-free as well, as a result of Cal grants , federal Pell grants and other forms of financial aid.

But making the CSU and UC systems tuition-free for even more students will require funding on a scale that only the federal government is capable of supporting, even if the benefit is only available to students from families that makes less than $125,000 a year.

It is estimated that even without this family income limitation, eliminating tuition for four years at all public colleges and universities for all students would cost taxpayers $79 billion a year, according to U.S. Department of Education data . Consider, however, that the federal government  spent $91 billion  in 2016 on policies that subsidized college attendance. At least some of that could be used to help make public higher education institutions tuition-free in partnership with the states.

Free college tuition programs have proved effective in helping mitigate the system’s current inequities by increasing college enrollment, lowering dependence on student loan debt and improving completion rates , especially among students of color and lower-income students who are often the first in their family to attend college.

In the first year of the TN Promise , community college enrollment in Tennessee increased by 24.7%, causing 4,000 more students to enroll. The percentage of Black students in that state’s community college population increased from 14% to 19% and the proportion of Hispanic students increased from 4% to 5%.

Students who attend community college tuition-free also graduate at higher rates. Tennessee’s first Promise student cohort had a 52.6% success rate compared to only a 38.9% success rate for their non-Promise peers. After two years of free college tuition, Rhode Island’s college-promise program saw its community college graduation rate triple and the graduation rate among students of color increase ninefold.

The impact on student debt is more obvious. Tennessee, for instance, saw its applications for student loans decrease by 17% in the first year of its program, with loan amounts decreasing by 12%. At the same time, Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications soared, with 40% of the entire nation’s increase in applications originating in that state in the first year of their Promise program.

Wage inequality by education, already dreadful before the pandemic, is getting worse. In May, the unemployment rate among workers without a high school diploma was nearly triple the rate of workers with a bachelor’s degree. No matter what Congress does to provide support to those affected by the pandemic and the ensuing recession, employment prospects for far too many people in our workforce will remain bleak after the pandemic recedes. Today, the fastest growing sectors of the economy are in health care, computers and information technology. To have a real shot at a job in those sectors, workers need a college credential of some form such as an industry-recognized skills certificate or an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.

The surest way to make the proven benefits of higher education available to everyone is to make college tuition-free for low and middle-income students at public colleges, and the federal government should help make that happen.

Morley Winograd is president of the Campaign for Free College Tuition . Max Lubin is CEO of Rise , a student-led nonprofit organization advocating for free college.  

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. Commentaries published on EdSource represent diverse viewpoints about California’s public education systems. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our  guidelines  and  contact us .

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Genia Curtsinger 2 years ago 2 years ago

Making community college free to those who meet the admission requirements would help many people. First of all, it would make it easy for students and families, for instance; you go to college and have to pay thousands of dollars to get a college education, but if community college is free it would help so you could be saving money and get a college education for free, with no cost at all. It would make … Read More

Making community college free to those who meet the admission requirements would help many people. First of all, it would make it easy for students and families, for instance; you go to college and have to pay thousands of dollars to get a college education, but if community college is free it would help so you could be saving money and get a college education for free, with no cost at all. It would make it more affordable to the student and their families.

Therefore I think people should have free education for those who meet the admission requirements.

nothing 2 years ago 2 years ago

I feel like colleges shouldn’t be completely free, but a lot more affordable for people so everyone can have a chance to have a good college education.

Jaden Wendover 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think all colleges should be free, because why would you pay to learn?

Samantha Cole 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think college should be free because there are a lot of people that want to go to college but they can’t pay for it so they don’t go and end up in jail or working as a waitress or in a convenience store. I know I want to go to college but I can’t because my family doesn’t make enough money to send me to college but my family makes too much for financial aid.

Nick Gurrs 2 years ago 2 years ago

I feel like this subject has a lot of answers, For me personally, I believe tuition and college, in general, should be free because it will help students get out of debt and not have debt, and because it will help people who are struggling in life to get a job and make a living off a job.

NO 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think college tuition should be free. A lot of adults want to go to college and finish their education but can’t partly because they can’t afford to. Some teens need to work at a young age just so they can save money for college which I feel they shouldn’t have to. If people don’t want to go to college then they just can work and go on with their lives.

Not saying my name 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think college tuition should be free because people drop out because they can’t pay the tuition to get into college and then they can’t graduate and live a good life and they won’t get a job because it says they dropped out of school. So it would be harder to get a job and if the tuition wasn’t a thing, people would live an awesome life because of this.

Brisa 3 years ago 3 years ago

I’m not understanding. Are we not agreeing that college should be free, or are we?

m 2 years ago 2 years ago

it shouldnt

Trevor Everhart 3 years ago 3 years ago

What do you mean by there is no such thing as free tuition?

Olga Snichernacs 3 years ago 3 years ago

Nice! I enjoyed reading.

Anonymous Cat 3 years ago 3 years ago

Tuition-Free: Free tuition, or sometimes tuition free is a phrase you have heard probably a good number of times. … Therefore, free tuition to put it simply is the opportunity provide to students by select universities around the world to received a degree from their institution without paying any sum of money for the teaching.

Mister B 3 years ago 3 years ago

There is no such thing as tuition free.

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Should a College Education Be Available to All People for Free?

Introduction.

The cost of college education in the United States has been on the rise in the past two decades. Many students are finding it hard to graduate because of financial constraints, even though the government offers financial support. Many learners avoid the trap of leaving school with huge debts that might take them many years to clear. This issue has been debated in various sectors, with proponents and opponents presenting different arguments for either supporting or opposing it. Proponents believe that free education will strengthen the labor market, grow the economy, and increase equality in society. On the contrary, opponents argue that it will devalue the college degree and overburden the taxpayers, as well as the federal and state governments. Countries that offer free tertiary education report both positive and negative impacts. Arguments from both sides originate from the results of surveys conducted on the positive and negative effects of free college education in countries such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway. College education should be free because it will widen the workforce, boost the economy, decrease inequality, and allow students to focus more on their careers.

Why College Education Should Free

Widening of the workforce.

Providing free education for everyone in America will widen the workforce by increasing the number of qualified people in the labor market. Technological advancement has introduced the concept of automation in many jobs that involve simple tasks. However, there is a need for more qualified individuals with analytical and creative thinking skills to do the work that machines cannot do (Winograd and Lubin). A free college education would create a large pool of graduates with technical skills; this would broaden the labor force and increase its agility. Moreover, availability of qualified candidates would make it easier for industries to recruit, hire, train, and retain highly-qualified individuals with a wide range of capabilities (Kromydas 4). The majority of jobs in contemporary society require advanced technical skills that can only be acquired in college (Goger). In that regard, free college education would create a better-educated workforce that would fill the numerous positions that are available in the various economic sectors.

Economic Boost

Another reason why college education should be free is the role it would play in boosting the economy. Government statistics have shown that students graduate with an average debt of $31,172 that takes several years to repay fully (Winograd and Lubin). Moreover, the interest that accrues on their education loans makes it harder for them to focus on other life aspects such as starting a family or buying a house. Free education would allow students to graduate without debt, and therefore, enhance their readiness to earn, save, and invest (Winograd and Lubin). The economy would benefit immensely if the money that people use to repay their student debts went toward investments or starting businesses. In addition, instead of paying for their children’s college education, parents could use that money to invest in their retirement or the stock market. Either way, college for all would provide a financial incentive that would save a lot of money. Habits such as consumer spending and investing are key in the stimulation of economic growth (Winograd and Lubin). Many students are afraid of leaving school with huge debts, and so, they avoid going to college altogether. Decreased graduation rates lower the number of professionals available to fill the vacancies that are available in various industries.

Increased Equality

Inequality in the education sector is a pervasive challenge that could be solved by the introduction of free college education for all. Students from low-income families find it difficult to afford tertiary education because it is expensive ( Financial Stress ). In that regard, equal opportunities are unavailable for young people to pursue careers of their choice. There are many bright individuals who fail to make their contribution to society because of the lack of money to go to school. A lack of education is associated with low wages and a below-average lifestyle (Kromydas 6). States that have free college tuition programs record positive outcomes: inequality has declined significantly and the rates of graduation have increased (Winograd and Lubin). The Tennessee Promise scholarship program increased college enrolment by 24.7%; the admission of African American and Hispanic students rose by 5% and 1% respectively (Winograd and Lubin). The graduation rate in the program was 52.6%, while that of students who finance their education was 38.9% (Winograd and Lubin). The rates of graduation among students who attend college on scholarship are higher than those of students who pay for it.

Increased Focus on Studies and Careers

Proponents of free college education argue that it is necessary because it will allow students to focus on their education and careers, rather than looking for tuition money. Some of the main causes of stress among college students include the high cost of education, the means of repaying their loans, challenging academic work, relationships, and securing employment after school ( Financial Stress ). Research has shown that financial constraints cause worry, anxiety, and even depression among students. The sustained stress of thinking about how to pay for tuition and the burgeoning debts after graduation diverts their focus from their education to the search for money ( Financial Stress ). These challenges crowd their brain’s ability to focus on coursework and their long-term professional goals. As a result, the rates of graduation decline immensely as many of the students drop out for lack of money.

A 2015 study conducted by the Ohio State University on student wellness revealed that approximately 70% of students experience stress because of the poor state of their finances (Winograd and Lubin). Anxiety originates from thinking about ways to pay for their tuition and monthly expenses. Moreover, 32% of the students interviewed stated that at certain times, they had to abdicate their studies so that they could look for money to pay their debts (Winograd and Lubin). These challenges could be mitigated by a free college education for all.

Opposing Arguments

Opponents of free college education argue that it is impracticable because it would devalue college education and overburden the taxpayers, as well as the state and federal governments. They have criticized the proponents for presenting arguments that though valid, have little basis in reality. For example, they support it and fail to give workable recommendations on how to get the money for the program without overburdening the state and federal governments. It would be inappropriate to increase taxes so as to earn money to fund a free education program. Moreover, they ignore how it would affect the value of a college degree.

Increased Pressure on Governments and Taxpayers

One of the main arguments against free college for all is the financial pressure it would place on the federal and state governments, and taxpayers. Such a program would require the government to find extra money to finance it, taking into consideration the likely increase in enrolment. Free college education means that Americans would be required to pay more taxes for the government to get enough money to implement and sustain the program (DiMartino 261). Higher education is not a universal right but a private pursuit that is usually done in order to get an economic return (McCowan, 111). Therefore, the government does not a moral obligation to make it free for everyone. The uncertainty of who will be affected by the increases in tax is a source of discomfort and opposition among Americans who think that the idea is not viable (Goger). The most realistic option would be increasing and creating new taxes, thus burdening the taxpayers who are already paying taxes that are considered relatively high in comparison with other developed economies.

Devaluation of the College Degree

The value of a college degree would decline significantly if education was made free for all. Currently, many people rate a degree highly mainly because of the dedication and struggle involved in its attainment. The stress of financing one’s education through loans and taking multiple jobs makes it an invaluable pursuit (Goger). Free education may erode its quality because students would not feel then need to work hard as the government would pay for their tuition. Moreover, the majority of them would not be motivated to graduate quickly because of the lack of an urgency to reduce debt. Therefore, laziness and indifference to education would increase because of the elimination of the financial pressure of mounting student debt (Goger). This renders the idea of free college education for all a bad idea that should not be implemented. Moreover, free education would not solve the inequality that exists in the education system because of social and cultural factors (DiMartino 274). In that regard, free education would be beneficial to a small percentage of students who cannot pursue higher education because of financial constraints. This would exclude young people who do not go to college because of social and cultural factors.

The arguments that free education might devalue a college degree and put pressure on governments and taxpayers is highly flawed. First, free education would increase competition in the labor market because a higher number of graduates would compel organizations to raise their hiring and recruitment standards (Goger). Therefore, students would be more motivated than before to attain excellence in their education in order to increase the chances of pursing the careers of their choice. Moreover, there are many people who pursue alternative careers because of the lack of money to pay for tertiary education. It is highly unlikely that the program would devalue a college degree. This phenomenon has not been observed in countries that offer free college education, such as Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

Opponents also argue that free education would put pressure on state and federal governments, and taxpayers. This argument is based on the assumption that the only way for the federal government to finance the program is through raising taxes. However, there are other alternatives that can be applied.

It is estimated that even without this family income limitation, eliminating tuition for four years at all public colleges and universities for all students would cost taxpayers $79 billion a year, according to U.S. Department of Education data . Consider, however, that the federal government spent $91 billion in 2016 on policies that subsidized college attendance. At least some of that could be used to help make public higher education institutions tuition-free in partnership with the states. (Winograd and Lubin)

The government could also reevaluate its spending in various sectors in favor of free education and enact more stringent policies that seal the loopholes that wealthy individuals and organizations use to avoid paying taxes.

Utopia and Free College Education

Thomas More taught that in a utopian society, governments focus all resources on the provision of services that promote the safety and welfare of its citizens. Such civilizations are characterized by equality as everyone has access to opportunities for personal and professional advancement, and they are treated with dignity (More). Free college education can be viewed as one of the ways that the US can achieve a utopian society: it will promote public interests, accord people dignity, encourage individual development, and support the improvement of people’s welfare (McCowan 115). It would provide a way for people to live with dignity by eradicating ignorance, pursuing careers of their choice, and serving society.

College education should be free because it will widen the workforce, boost the economy, decrease inequality, and allow students to focus more on their careers. There are several downsides though: there is a possibility of devaluing the college degree and placing financial pressure on taxpayers and the state and federal governments. However, the impact on the education system, the economy, people’s lives, and the society at large outweigh the shortcomings. This conclusion has limitations; first, it is based on the assumption that skills can only be taught in college. Secondly, it disregards the importance of encouraging young people to venture into entrepreneurship as an alternative to formal education. Many successful entrepreneurs have reiterated on several occasions that they do not usually consider academic qualifications when hiring. Their main focus is on the individual’s creativity, thinking capability, and the potential to solve complex problems. It is important for Congress to support the provision of free college education by enacting laws that support it. Otherwise, the American economy might not be able to compete effectively with other developed nations that offer free education and that have a highly-qualified and academically diverse workforce.

Works Cited

DiMartino, Lauren A. “ The “Free College” Illusion: How State Tuition Support Programs are Widening the Opportunity Gap. ” Georgetown Journal on Poverty, Law, and Policy , vol. 25, no. 2, 2018, pp. 258-301.

“ Financial Stress Prevents College Students from Graduating: What Can We Do? ” Scholarship America , 2019.

Goger, Annelies. “ Free College Won’t Be Enough to Prepare Americans for the Future of Work. ” Brookings , 2019.

Kromydas, Theocharis. “ Rethinking Higher Education and its Relationship with Social Inequalities: Past Knowledge, Present State, and Future Potential. ” Palgrave Communications , vol. 3, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1-12.

McCowan, Tristan. “ Is There a Universal Right to Higher Education? ” British Journal of Educational Studies , vol. 60. No. 2, 2012, pp. 111-128.

More, Thomas. “ Utopia. ” The Project Gutenberg , 2000.

Winograd, Morley, and Max Lubin. “ Tuition-Free College is Critical to Our Economy. ” EdSource, 2020.

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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

Admit-a-bull // official admissions blog, why a college education is important.

By Joe Emerson | Last Updated: Jul 15, 2022

Defining why a college education is important involves more than just identifying the superficial benefits of more career opportunities. At a deeper level, college is where you will map a path through life that can take you to places you never expected to go.

The beauty of postsecondary education is that college can yield tangible and intangible benefits for you that in turn benefit others – even if school doesn’t awaken your sleeping Pablo Picasso, Stephen Hawking, or Bill Gates.

Tangible Benefits of a College Education

It’s well established that a college education delivers measurable material benefits. If you were to rattle off the list of reasons you’re attending school, chances are these are the first ones you’ll mention.

College Education and Wages

A handful of money definitely qualifies as a tangible benefit, and research has matched levels of education to payroll expectations and the ability to find a job:

• In 2015, bachelor’s degree holders earned 64 percent more than those with a high school diploma.
• Bachelor’s degree recipients can expect to earn about $1 million more over a lifetime than a person who doesn’t go to college.
• A postsecondary education is expected to be required for about two-thirds of available jobs by 2020.

A recent study broke the higher education benefits down even further, finding among other things, that a bachelor’s degree now means the holder will earn 84 percent more than someone with no postsecondary education. The report went even further, projecting lifetime earnings based on virtually all education levels:

• Lifetime wages of a high school dropout – $973,000
• Lifetime wages of a high school graduate – $1.3 million
• Lifetime wages of someone with some college but no degree – $1.5 million
• Lifetime wages of an associate degree holder – $1.7 million
• Lifetime wages of a bachelor’s degree holder – $2.3 million
• Lifetime wages of a master’s degree holder – $2.7 million
• Lifetime wages of a person with a doctorate – $3.3 million
• Lifetime wages of a professional degree holder –$3.6 million

Based on U.S. Census Bureau data , the usual median weekly earnings in 2017 for people of varying education levels was:

• Doctoral degree holder’s median weekly earnings – $1,743
• Professional degree holder’s median weekly earnings – $1,836
• Master’s degree holder’s median weekly earnings – $1,401
• Bachelor’s degree holder’s median weekly earnings – $1,173
• Associate degree holder’s median weekly earnings – $836
• Person with some college (no degree) median weekly earnings – $774
• High school diploma (only) holder’s median weekly earnings – $712
• Person without high school diploma median weekly earnings – $520

The unemployment rates in 2017 for people in those education categories was 1.5 percent for doctoral degree holders, 1.5 percent for professional degree holders, 2.2 percent for master’s degree holders, 2.5 percent for bachelor’s degree holders, 3.4 percent for associate degree holders, 4 percent for people with some college, 4.6 percent for people with a high school diploma, and 6.5 percent for people without a high school diploma.

Better Jobs Equal Better Benefits, Perks

A college education also usually translates to great benefits and perks as well:

• Typical white-collar benefits: health insurance, eyecare insurance, vacation and other paid time off, dental insurance, maternity/paternity leave, pension plan, 401(k)
• Potential white-collar perks: transportation and parking reimbursement and/or company car, free food and beverages, flexible schedules and freedom to work from home (or elsewhere), concierge services, golden parachutes (high-dollar severance packages)

For Some, College Is the First Real Adventure

College takes you out of familiar surroundings and presents new challenges. But college doesn’t only pave the way for intangible experiences. Adapting to new faces in a fresh place is just the start. The education process can mean internships, overseas travel, exciting research opportunities, and exploration of multiple career paths, all of which can lead to some very tangible results when you start working.

And academic success opens doors to careers where, quite literally in some cases, even the sky and moon aren’t the limits. Think aerospace engineering.

Connections that Can Last a Lifetime

The thousands of people you meet, study with, and work alongside in college will range from peers to mentors, along with power players in your chosen field and others. These are connections you will make note of and potentially use to advance yourself and your ideas.

And as far as relationships go, the only romantic label as common as “high school sweetheart” is “college sweetheart.”

Intangible Benefits of a College Education

A college education can open doors for your career and your own personal growth. For example, college helps develop many important skills, such as self-awareness, global-mindedness, critical thinking, and more.

People by Nature Desire Knowledge

That is a paraphrase of a premise that the Greek philosopher Aristotle states in his Metaphysics . It is affirmed by the connection of head and heart when the study of history helps you forecast the future, when math adds up to real-life solutions, and when the development of skills allows you to produce a masterpiece worthy of the Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, or U.S. Patent Office.

In Pursuit of Critical Thinking

Results are in on colleges and critical thinking. During one recent study , researchers began with the notion that everyone wants colleges to teach critical-thinking skills and that the challenge routinely is accepted. Here’s a key finding: Data show that a student who begins college with critical thinking skills in the 50 th percentile can expect to be in the 72 nd percentile after four years.

Critical thinking is, according to the Foundation for Critical Thinking , “that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.” Developing that skill yields endless opportunities to enrich your life both personally and professionally.

College Advances Self-Realization

A college education, if pursued honestly and earnestly, gives you the knowledge and skills needed to pursue a career and your passions. The degree also can bring hard-to-match personal satisfaction. A huge part of ensuring that self-realization process is finding a school that is right for you , where you’ll feel safe and comfortable enough to let yourself grow and explore.

Our USF admissions advisors are happy to answer your questions about the USF admissions process, so contact us online or by phone at 813-974-3350 .

About Joe Emerson

Joe Emerson spent 30 years as a magazine and newspaper reporter, editor and copyeditor who turned to freelancing after 20 years with The Tampa Tribune, which closed in 2016 after 125 years of serving the Tampa Bay area. Writing and delivering valuable information remain his passion.

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An extensive body of research has argued that obtaining a college diploma is a good deal for graduates on almost any measure – from higher earnings to lower unemployment rates. By the same token, those without a college degree can find their upward mobility in the job market limited by a lack of educational credentials: This survey finds that one-third of Americans who lack a four-year college degree report that they have declined to apply for a job they felt they were qualified for, because that job required a bachelor’s degree.

But despite the potential benefits and opportunities available to college graduates – and the potential challenges faced by those who lack a college diploma – Americans have somewhat mixed attitudes about the effectiveness of traditional four-year colleges and other higher education institutions. On a personal level, many college graduates describe their own educational experience as having a generally positive impact on their personal and professional development. Roughly six-in-ten (62%) college graduates with two- or four-year degrees think their degree was very useful for helping them grow personally and intellectually, while roughly half think it was very useful for opening up job opportunities (53%) or for providing them with useful job-related skills and knowledge (49%).

Yet even as many college graduates view their own educational experience in positive terms, the public as a whole – including a substantial share of college graduates – expresses reservations about the extent to which various higher education institutions prepare students for the workforce more generally. Just 16% of Americans think that a four-year degree prepares students very well for a well-paying job in today’s economy, and 51% say this type of degree prepares students “somewhat well” for the workplace. Some 12% think that a two-year associate degree prepares students very well (46% say somewhat well), and 26% feel that certification programs in a professional, technical, or vocational field prepare students very well (52% say somewhat well).

The purpose of college: Americans view workforce-relevant skills and knowledge as more important than personal and intellectual growth

Americans’ views of what a college education should be tend to prioritize specific, workplace-related skills and knowledge rather than general intellectual development and personal growth. Half of Americans say that the main purpose of college should be to teach specific skills and knowledge that can be used in the workplace, while 35% think its main purpose should be to help students grow and develop personally and intellectually and 13% volunteer that these objectives are equally important. The public’s views on this issue have shifted slightly in favor of skills development since the last time Pew Research Center asked this question in 2011. At that point, 47% said main purpose of college should be to teach specific skills and knowledge and 39% said it should be to promote personal and intellectual growth.

Americans who have engaged in additional schooling beyond a bachelor’s degree are especially likely to say that the main purpose of college should be personal and intellectual growth, rather than the acquisition of specific skills and knowledge. Some 47% of those with a postgraduate or professional degree think the main purpose of college should be personal and intellectual growth, while 35% think it should be teaching workplace-relevant skills.

In contrast, those with limited college experience (or no college experience at all) are more likely to prioritize the development of specific skills over general intellectual improvement. For instance, 56% of Americans with a high school diploma or less say college should be primarily a place to develop specific work-oriented knowledge and skills, while just 31% see it primarily as a place for personal and intellectual growth.

There is also a partisan element to these views, with Republicans and Democrats expressing highly differing opinions on the purpose of college. Democrats (including Democratic-leaning independents) are about evenly split on which of these objectives is more important: 42% say colleges should prioritize personal and intellectual growth, while 43% say they should prioritize the development of workforce-relevant skills. But among Republicans and Republican leaners, 58% say that the main purpose of college should be teach specific skills – while just 28% feel that the main purpose should be general personal and intellectual growth.

These partisan differences hold true even after accounting for differences in educational attainment. Democrats and Democratic leaners with high levels of educational attainment are more likely to prioritize personal and intellectual growth relative to Democrats and Democratic leaners with lower levels of educational attainment.

But Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents at all educational levels are more likely than Republicans and Republican-leaning independents with similar levels of education to believe that personal and intellectual growth should be the main purpose of college.

Along with Democrats and those who have progressed beyond a bachelor’s degree, younger adults (those ages 18 to 29) are more likely than older adults to feel that personal and intellectual growth should be the primary purpose of college: some 43% of 18- to 29-year olds feel this way, compared with roughly one-third of those in older age groups.

In addition, Americans who themselves work in the education field tend to place a greater emphasis on personal and intellectual growth as the primary purpose of college: 46% believe that this should be the main purpose of a college degree, while 35% believe that college should mainly be a place to develop specific skills and knowledge (19% of those who work in the education industry consider them equally important).

Most college graduates regard their college experience as very useful for intellectual growth; views are more mixed when it comes to job opportunities and marketable skills

When asked to assess certain aspects of their own educational experience, about six-in-ten (62%) college graduates (including those who graduated from a two-year degree program) feel that their time in college was very useful in helping them grow personally and intellectually. About half say their college experience was very useful in helping them access job opportunities (53%) or in helping them develop skills and knowledge they could use in the workplace (49%).

The further people have progressed in their college career, the more likely they are to consider their experience very useful. Those with a postgraduate or professional degree are more likely to say that their college education was very useful in each of these respects compared with four-year degree holders, who are in turn more likely than those with a two-year associate degree to say that their education was very useful across each of these measures. For example, while two-thirds of those with a postgraduate or professional degree say their college education was very useful in opening doors to job opportunities, 56% of those with a four-year degree, and an even smaller share (40%) among those with a two-year degree, say the same. And while 57% of those with more than a bachelor’s degree say college was very useful in helping them develop marketable skills, about half or a smaller share among those with a four- or two-year degree hold this view (49% and 43%, respectively).

When it comes to helping them grow professionally and intellectually, majorities of those with a postgraduate or professional degree (77%) and those with a bachelor’s degree (64%) say college was very useful, compared with 46% of those with a two-year college degree.

Americans have mixed views about the extent to which college prepares students for a well-paying job in today’s economy

When asked a broader set of questions about the impact of college more generally, the public expresses somewhat mixed views about the extent to which a college education prepares students for success in the workforce.

Two-thirds of Americans (67%) think that a traditional four-year degree prepares students for a well-paying job in today’s economy at least somewhat well, but just 16% think it prepares them very well, and 29% think it does not prepare them well. A somewhat smaller share of Americans (58%) think that a two-year community college degree prepares students for a well-paying job either very (12%) or somewhat (46%) well, while 38% think that these programs do not prepare students well.

Interestingly, Americans with a four-year college degree are generally no more positive – or negative – than those with less education about the relationship between a four-year degree and a well-paying job: 13% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more education say a four-year degree prepares people very well, as do 11% of those with a two-year associate degree, 12% of those with some college experience but no degree, and 17% of those with a high school diploma. Among those who did not complete high school, however, 40% believe that a four-year college degree does a very good job of preparing people for a well-paying job.

When it comes to assessments of a two-year college degree, about one-in-six (16%) Americans who hold this type of degree say it prepares workers very well for a well-paying job. This is considerably larger than the share of those with at least a bachelor’s degree (7%) who say a two-year degree prepares people very well, but not necessarily more positive than the views of those with less education.

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to say four- and two-year degrees prepare people very well for a job in today’s economy. For example, about three-in-ten (29%) Hispanics and about a quarter (24%) of blacks say this about a four-year degree, compared with 12% of whites. And while about one-in-five blacks and Hispanics (18% each) say a two-year associate degree prepares people very well, one-in-ten whites share this view.

These findings are consistent with previous Pew Research Center surveys that found that black and Latino parents view college as more essential for their children’s success than do white parents.

A substantially larger share of the public has positive attitudes towards certification programs in a professional, technical or vocational field in the context of workforce development. Some 78% of Americans think that these programs prepare students well for a job in today’s economy, including 26% who think they prepare students very well. Just roughly one-in-five (19%) think they do not prepare students well. It is important to note, however, that respondents were not asked about the effectiveness of certification programs instead of a college education.

Positive assessments of certificate programs as a way to prepare workers for jobs in today’s economy are particularly widespread among those who did not complete high school; 44% in this group say these types of programs prepare people very well, compared with about a quarter (27%) of those with a high school diploma and a similar share of those with some college, but no degree (22%), a two-year degree (28%), or a four-year degree or more education (22%). Certificate programs are also particularly well-regarded among Hispanics, 39% of whom say they prepare people very well for a good job in today’s economy. About a quarter of blacks (25%) and whites (23%) say the same.

One-third of Americans without a bachelor’s degree have elected to not apply for a job they felt they were qualified for because it required a four-year degree

Recent research has argued that there is a “ credentials gap ” in today’s workforce, as employers increasingly require a bachelor’s degree for positions that did not demand this level of schooling in the past. And the survey finds that 33% of Americans who do not have a four-year college degree report that they have declined to apply for a job they felt they were qualified for, because it required a bachelor’s degree.

Americans who have engaged in some type of formal education beyond high school (short of obtaining a bachelor’s degree) are particularly likely to believe they’ve been adversely affected by credentialing requirements as they work their way up the educational ladder. Some 25% of Americans with a high school diploma or less and no additional schooling beyond that have not applied for a job because of a bachelor’s degree requirement. But that figure rises to 34% among those with a high school diploma plus additional vocational schooling, to 38% among those with some college experience but no degree, and to 44% among those with a two-year associate degree. Put somewhat differently, as people receive additional formal education without actually obtaining a bachelor’s degree, they may develop relevant skills without the on-paper credentials to match.

In addition, adults younger than 50 are much more likely than older adults to have refrained from applying to a job they felt they were qualified for because they didn’t meet the formal educational requirements. About four-in-ten non-college graduates ages 18 to 29 (41%) and ages 30 to 49 (44%) say this has happened, compared with 31% of those ages 50 to 64 and just 12% of those 65 and older.

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Celebrating 150 years of Harvard Summer School. Learn about our history.

12 Strategies to Writing the Perfect College Essay

College admission committees sift through thousands of college essays each year. Here’s how to make yours stand out.

Pamela Reynolds

When it comes to deciding who they will admit into their programs, colleges consider many criteria, including high school grades, extracurricular activities, and ACT and SAT scores. But in recent years, more colleges are no longer considering test scores.

Instead, many (including Harvard through 2026) are opting for “test-blind” admission policies that give more weight to other elements in a college application. This policy change is seen as fairer to students who don’t have the means or access to testing, or who suffer from test anxiety.

So, what does this mean for you?

Simply that your college essay, traditionally a requirement of any college application, is more important than ever.

A college essay is your unique opportunity to introduce yourself to admissions committees who must comb through thousands of applications each year. It is your chance to stand out as someone worthy of a seat in that classroom.

A well-written and thoughtful essay—reflecting who you are and what you believe—can go a long way to separating your application from the slew of forgettable ones that admissions officers read. Indeed, officers may rely on them even more now that many colleges are not considering test scores.

Below we’ll discuss a few strategies you can use to help your essay stand out from the pack. We’ll touch on how to start your essay, what you should write for your college essay, and elements that make for a great college essay.

Be Authentic

More than any other consideration, you should choose a topic or point of view that is consistent with who you truly are.

Readers can sense when writers are inauthentic.

Inauthenticity could mean the use of overly flowery language that no one would ever use in conversation, or it could mean choosing an inconsequential topic that reveals very little about who you are.

Use your own voice, sense of humor, and a natural way of speaking.

Whatever subject you choose, make sure it’s something that’s genuinely important to you and not a subject you’ve chosen just to impress. You can write about a specific experience, hobby, or personality quirk that illustrates your strengths, but also feel free to write about your weaknesses.

Honesty about traits, situations, or a childhood background that you are working to improve may resonate with the reader more strongly than a glib victory speech.

Grab the Reader From the Start

You’ll be competing with so many other applicants for an admission officer’s attention.

Therefore, start your essay with an opening sentence or paragraph that immediately seizes the imagination. This might be a bold statement, a thoughtful quote, a question you pose, or a descriptive scene.

Starting your essay in a powerful way with a clear thesis statement can often help you along in the writing process. If your task is to tell a good story, a bold beginning can be a natural prelude to getting there, serving as a roadmap, engaging the reader from the start, and presenting the purpose of your writing.

Focus on Deeper Themes

Some essay writers think they will impress committees by loading an essay with facts, figures, and descriptions of activities, like wins in sports or descriptions of volunteer work. But that’s not the point.

College admissions officers are interested in learning more about who you are as a person and what makes you tick.

They want to know what has brought you to this stage in life. They want to read about realizations you may have come to through adversity as well as your successes, not just about how many games you won while on the soccer team or how many people you served at a soup kitchen.

Let the reader know how winning the soccer game helped you develop as a person, friend, family member, or leader. Make a connection with your soup kitchen volunteerism and how it may have inspired your educational journey and future aspirations. What did you discover about yourself?

Show Don’t Tell

As you expand on whatever theme you’ve decided to explore in your essay, remember to show, don’t tell.

The most engaging writing “shows” by setting scenes and providing anecdotes, rather than just providing a list of accomplishments and activities.

Reciting a list of activities is also boring. An admissions officer will want to know about the arc of your emotional journey too.

Try Doing Something Different

If you want your essay to stand out, think about approaching your subject from an entirely new perspective. While many students might choose to write about their wins, for instance, what if you wrote an essay about what you learned from all your losses?

If you are an especially talented writer, you might play with the element of surprise by crafting an essay that leaves the response to a question to the very last sentence.

You may want to stay away from well-worn themes entirely, like a sports-related obstacle or success, volunteer stories, immigration stories, moving, a summary of personal achievements or overcoming obstacles.

However, such themes are popular for a reason. They represent the totality of most people’s lives coming out of high school. Therefore, it may be less important to stay away from these topics than to take a fresh approach.

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Write With the Reader in Mind

Writing for the reader means building a clear and logical argument in which one thought flows naturally from another.

Use transitions between paragraphs.

Think about any information you may have left out that the reader may need to know. Are there ideas you have included that do not help illustrate your theme?

Be sure you can answer questions such as: Does what you have written make sense? Is the essay organized? Does the opening grab the reader? Is there a strong ending? Have you given enough background information? Is it wordy?

Write Several Drafts

Set your essay aside for a few days and come back to it after you’ve had some time to forget what you’ve written. Often, you’ll discover you have a whole new perspective that enhances your ability to make revisions.

Start writing months before your essay is due to give yourself enough time to write multiple drafts. A good time to start could be as early as the summer before your senior year when homework and extracurricular activities take up less time.

Read It Aloud

Writer’s tip : Reading your essay aloud can instantly uncover passages that sound clumsy, long-winded, or false.

Don’t Repeat

If you’ve mentioned an activity, story, or anecdote in some other part of your application, don’t repeat it again in your essay.

Your essay should tell college admissions officers something new. Whatever you write in your essay should be in philosophical alignment with the rest of your application.

Also, be sure you’ve answered whatever question or prompt may have been posed to you at the outset.

Ask Others to Read Your Essay

Be sure the people you ask to read your essay represent different demographic groups—a teacher, a parent, even a younger sister or brother.

Ask each reader what they took from the essay and listen closely to what they have to say. If anyone expresses confusion, revise until the confusion is cleared up.

Pay Attention to Form

Although there are often no strict word limits for college essays, most essays are shorter rather than longer. Common App, which students can use to submit to multiple colleges, suggests that essays stay at about 650 words.

“While we won’t as a rule stop reading after 650 words, we cannot promise that an overly wordy essay will hold our attention for as long as you’d hoped it would,” the Common App website states.

In reviewing other technical aspects of your essay, be sure that the font is readable, that the margins are properly spaced, that any dialogue is set off properly, and that there is enough spacing at the top. Your essay should look clean and inviting to readers.

End Your Essay With a “Kicker”

In journalism, a kicker is the last punchy line, paragraph, or section that brings everything together.

It provides a lasting impression that leaves the reader satisfied and impressed by the points you have artfully woven throughout your piece.

So, here’s our kicker: Be concise and coherent, engage in honest self-reflection, and include vivid details and anecdotes that deftly illustrate your point.

While writing a fantastic essay may not guarantee you get selected, it can tip the balance in your favor if admissions officers are considering a candidate with a similar GPA and background.

Write, revise, revise again, and good luck!

Experience life on a college campus. Spend your summer at Harvard.

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About the Author

Pamela Reynolds is a Boston-area feature writer and editor whose work appears in numerous publications. She is the author of “Revamp: A Memoir of Travel and Obsessive Renovation.”

How Involved Should Parents and Guardians Be in High School Student College Applications and Admissions?

There are several ways parents can lend support to their children during the college application process. Here's how to get the ball rolling.

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Is free college a good idea? Increasingly, evidence says yes

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, douglas n. harris douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university @douglasharris99.

May 10, 2021

• 10 min read

In just a few short years, the idea of free college has moved from a radical idea to mainstream Democratic thinking. President Biden made free college one of his core campaign planks , and one that the first lady has been promoting for years. In his recent address to Congress, the president also signaled that he is ready for legislative action on a scaled-back version of the idea as part of his American Families Plan .

Two weeks ago, the nonprofit College Promise (CP)—led by Martha Kanter, who served as President Obama’s undersecretary for education—also released a proposal that will influence the free college debate. (Full disclosure: I previously advised the Biden campaign and presently advise CP, but have received no compensation for these efforts.)

In today’s polarized environment, the free college idea stands out for its bipartisan support. A majority of self-identified Republicans has supported the notion of free college in some polls. In fact, one of the first such statewide programs was put in place by Bill Haslam, the former Republican governor of Tennessee. While this could go the way of Obamacare, which faced strong GOP congressional opposition despite the law’s origins with Republican Mitt Romney, free college seems different. Biden’s latest plan only applies to community colleges, which focus on career and vocational education of the sort Republicans support, as opposed to universities, which many Republicans view as hostile battlegrounds in a culture war.

But I am less interested in the politics than the evidence of effectiveness. I have studied college access for many years and run two randomized control trials of financial aid , which produced some of the first causal evidence on free college in Milwaukee. Two years ago, Brookings released the first installment of the Milwaukee work, which I carried out with a team of researchers. Since then, we have collected more data and learned more about how students responded over time. Below, I summarize our just-released study (co-authored with Jonathan Mills), compare our results to other financial aid programs, and then discuss implications for the Biden and CP proposals. Consequently, I conclude that the evidence increasingly favors free college and “open access aid” more generally.

What Did We Learn in Milwaukee?

I developed The Degree Project (TDP) in 2009 as a demonstration program in partnership between the nonprofit Ascendium (then known as the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and Affiliates) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). TDP offered all first-time 9 th graders in half of MPS high schools $12,000 for college as “last-dollar” aid. Students could use the funds for college if they graduated from high school on time with a GPA of 2.5 and a class attendance rate of 90%. Also, as is the norm with free college programs, students had to fill out the FAFSA and have at least one dollar of unmet need. The aid could be used to attend any of the 66 public, in-state, two- or four-year colleges in Wisconsin. Ascendium provided up to $31 million to fund the grant and, as the main program administrator, sent regular letters to remind students about the program and its requirements. The organization also worked with school counselors to support students becoming eligible for the funds and preparing for college.

TDP was announced to students in the fall of 2011. Using anonymized data, we then tracked students’ high school, college, and life outcomes for eight years, and we recently received data extending through when students were roughly 22 years old. As a rare randomized trial, we could estimate the effects by comparing the control and treatment group outcomes. Here is what we found:

• For students who met the performance requirements, the program increased graduation from two-year colleges by 3 percentage points . This might seem small, but the denominator here is comprised of low-income 9 th graders. Half of the control group did not even graduate from high school, let alone college. The effect amounts to a 25% increase in two-year degrees.
• The framing and design of the program as free two-year college changed student decisions in ways consistent with what free college advocates suggest. The $12,000 maximum award amount was selected because it was sufficient to cover tuition and fees for a two-year college degree. The fact that TDP made two-year college free, but only reduced the cost of four-year college, was clearly communicated to students. This appears to explain one of our main results: Student enrollments shifted from four-year to two-year colleges. This is noteworthy given that students could use the funds at either two- or four-year colleges. In fact, students likely would have been able to use more of the $12,000 if they had shifted to four-year colleges. The only plausible reason for shifting to two-year colleges is that they were really attracted to the idea of free college.
• The “early commitment” nature of the program had some modest positive effects on some high school outcomes . Students learned about TDP in their 9 th grade year, giving them time to change their high school behaviors and college plans. Although it did not improve high school academic achievement, we find that TDP increased college expectations and the steps students took to prepare for college. TDP recipients also reported working harder because of the program (even though this did not show up in the academic measures). This highlights the fact that free college might also help address not only college-going rates, but the long-term stagnancy in high school outcomes.
• The merit requirements undermined the program’s effectiveness . Though the 2.5 GPA and 90% attendance and other requirements were arguably modest, only 21% of eligible students ended up meeting them. So, they ended up excluding many students. We also tested the two main ways that the merit requirements could have been helpful: (a) merit requirements might provide incentives for students to work hard during high school and better prepare for college, and (b) merit requirements might target aid to students who respond to it most. We find no evidence of either benefit. While students did work harder (see point [3] above), this appears to be due to other elements of the program, not the merit requirements.

Overall, these results suggest that aid is most effective when it is “open access”—that is, aid with early commitment and free college framing, but no merit requirements.

What about the evidence beyond Milwaukee?

Our study also reviews other research on financial aid, including federal aid, state merit aid programs, and the newer “promise scholarship” programs that mimic free college. Our study is not alone in finding that financial aid improves student outcomes. In fact, the vast majority of the most rigorous studies find positive effects on college attendance and college graduation. Given the strong average benefits of college, we can expect follow-up studies to show effects on employment earnings, voting, and other outcomes.

What about the costs? Open access aid is more expensive to be sure. More students receive aid and the aid levels per students are larger than traditional financial aid. Is it worth it? Our analysis suggests it is. We carried out new cost-benefit analyses of multiple programs, including TDP, but also other actively studied programs in: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Knox County, Tennessee; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and one statewide program in Nebraska. We also used estimates of the average effects of aid taken from prior literature reviews. All of these programs pass a cost-benefit test. That is, the effects on college outcomes, and the effects of college outcomes on future earnings, is much larger than the cost to the government and society as a whole. Moreover, it appears that benefits-per-dollar-of-cost are at least as high with open access aid as with more restricted programs. This means that open access aid provides greater total benefits to the community as a whole.

Back to the Free College Proposals

What do these results mean for President Biden’s and CP’s proposals? The table below provides a side-by-side comparison. The main difference is the level of detail. This reflects that the CP plan was designed to align with, and flesh out, the Biden campaign proposal. Perhaps the only substantive difference is that the CP proposal (and the Milwaukee program) includes private colleges. The Biden campaign documents exclude private colleges, though the American Families Plan just says “free community college,” signaling alignment with the CP plan. Both proposals are clearly in the category of open access aid.

There are numerous similarities between these provisions and the Milwaukee program that my team and I studied. All three programs make two-year college free (or nearly so) for all students without income requirements and through early commitment of aid. All three require the FAFSA and high school graduation. Importantly, unlike both the Biden and CP proposals, the Milwaukee program had merit requirements, which undermined its success. This is partly why our evidence is so relevant to the current debate.

Some might wonder why the president has scaled back the proposal to just free community college. This reflects that the idea of free college—even the “scaled back” version—is such a marked departure from past policy, especially at the federal level. Free community college alone would still be arguably the largest shift in federal higher education policy in the past half-century.

Caveats and Concluding Thoughts

We cannot make policy from evidence alone, but it can and should play a key role. Sometimes, policy ideas have such limited evidence of effectiveness that it is difficult to make any plausible case for a large-scale, national program. In other cases, there is enough promise for pilot studies and competitive grants to establish efficacy. With free college, we seem to be well beyond that point. In addition to decades of results on general financial aid programs, we have a growing number of studies on state and local programs that all show positive evidence—the “laboratory of democracy” at work. The idea of a large, federal free-college program therefore has more and more credibility.

A decade ago, it was not at all obvious that this is what the evidence would show. There was really no evidence on free college programs when we started this project back in 2009. Also, there were good reasons to expect that such a large increase in aid would suffer from “diminishing returns”—the idea that the next dollar is less effective than the previous one. This could have made free college more costly than the benefits could justify. Now, we know better.

I do still worry a bit about other factors and challenges. For example, the above analyses can only capture the immediate effects of financial aid, yet a federal free college program is such a marked departure in policy that it could alter political and market forces operating on higher education in unpredictable ways, perhaps even lowering college spending and quality. Also, if the proposal remains focused on community colleges, then this will shift students out of four-year colleges and into colleges that currently have very low completion rates. There are also other ways to increase college affordability and access that do not require free college (e.g., increased Pell Grants and income-based loan repayment), some of which target funds more narrowly to the most disadvantaged students. And there are many details to be worked out as the president’s allies in Congress try to generate sufficient support without (a) sacrificing core principles, or (b) creating new problems that can arise when grafting new federal programs on to widely varying state contexts.

Still, it is not often that an idea comes around that addresses a widely acknowledged problem and has both research support and a fair degree of bipartisan political support. The stars seem aligned to make some form of national free college a reality. The more evidence we see, the more that would seem to be a step forward.

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Education Should Be Free for Everyone

In my argumentative essay, I discuss the ethical side of having a free education system. I discuss the positive sides and the negative sides of free education, and I focus mostly on having free higher education since we already have free education up to High School graduation levels. I conclude with a discussion about the actions of colleges and Universities and how they would inevitably make the ethical discussion mute from a student’s perceptive since the burden of ethics would fall upon higher education institutions in a world where they are given plenty of incentive to act immorally.

From an ethical perspective, it seems unfair that people who have less money are going to miss more opportunities. Ethically, opportunities should be open for all people. Though it may be true that the availability of an opportunity shouldn’t guarantee that a person receives that opportunity, the opportunity shouldn’t be ruled out. For example, all people should be able to become qualified to work in air traffic control, and even though a blind person is hardly guaranteed such a job position, the opportunity shouldn’t be ruled out as a default. Free education, especially free higher education, may open up a series of opportunities that some people would otherwise be unable to enjoy, and even if those opportunities are not guaranteed, they shouldn’t be ruled out by default, which is what happens when some people cannot use higher education for financial reasons. (Flood, 2014)

Some people are going to use free education as a way of getting out of work and as a way of doing nothing with their lives. Students up to the final year in High School are unable to get full-time jobs and live independently on their wages, which is why their education should be free. However, when a person is able to get a full-time job and live independently, he or she may get out of working by living on the education system. Even if the qualifications are free and not the living expenses, a person may still claim a slew of benefits and receive no incentive to ever get a job because he or she remains in the education system for years and years. (Gritz, 2010)

If all forms of education are free for students, then it becomes very easy for a person to waste his or her life on meaningless education. The decision to get into thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt in order to pursue a career should be agonizing and very difficult so as to make the student think long and hard about the decision. If all education is free, then less thought is required, and students may waste years of their life studying for qualifications that they do not need or even want. (Kamenetz, 2016)

If a student is genuinely looking for higher education and is not looking for a reason to do nothing and mess around for years by exploiting other people’s tax money through free education, then such a person may enjoy a longer education process. For example, a student taking a series of law qualifications is going to need five to seven years of education, which is also very expensive. If the cost of the qualification were removed, such a person may be able to take up jobs on an intermittent basis, stretch out his or her qualification duration, and take longer to gain said qualifications in a more comfortable manner. Instead of having to spend years as a low-income student while building debt, such a student may spend longer on a qualification and work while studying so that he or she may enjoy a more comfortable education experience. Plus, all of this would occur who the pressure of accumulating student debt. (The Leadership Institute, 2018)

Despite the ethical upsides and downsides that come with free education for students, it is sadly the Universities and colleges that will spoil it. These days, student loans are very easy to get, and this has resulted in colleges and Universities putting their prices up to almost scandalous levels, and it has resulted in colleges and Universities creating courses that add no real value for people wishing to join the workforce. If colleges and Universities were being fully funded by tax dollars, they would encourage students to join with a whole host of silly and frivolous programs because the quality of education would no longer matter or apply. (Fox, 2006).

Bibliography

Flood, Alison. “US students request ‘trigger warnings’ on literature.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 May 2014, www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/19/us-students-request-trigger-warnings-in-literature.

Fox News, http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/09/01/why-does-college-cost-so-much-and-is-it-worth-it.html 2006

Gritz, Jennie Rothenberg. “What’s Wrong with the American University System.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 July 2010, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/07/whats-wrong-with-the-american-university-system/60458/.

Kamenetz, Anya. “How College Aid Is Like A Bad Coupon.” NPR, NPR, 17 Sept. 2016, www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/09/17/492973995/how-college-aid-is-like-a-bad-coupon.

The Leadership Institute. “Why are colleges so liberal?” Leadership Institute, www.leadershipinstitute.org/crazycolleges/. 2018

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Should College Be Free? The Pros and Cons

Types of Publicly Funded College Tuition Programs

Pros: why college should be free, cons: why college should not be free, what the free college debate means for students, how to cut your college costs now, frequently asked questions (faqs).

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Americans have been debating the wisdom of free college for decades, and more than 30 states now offer some type of free college program. But it wasn't until 2021 that a nationwide free college program came close to becoming reality, re-energizing a longstanding debate over whether or not free college is a good idea. 

And despite a setback for the free-college advocates, the idea is still in play. The Biden administration's free community college proposal was scrapped from the American Families Plan . But close observers say that similar proposals promoting free community college have drawn solid bipartisan support in the past. "Community colleges are one of the relatively few areas where there's support from both Republicans and Democrats," said Tulane economics professor Douglas N. Harris, who has previously consulted with the Biden administration on free college, in an interview with The Balance. 

To get a sense of the various arguments for and against free college, as well as the potential impacts on U.S. students and taxpayers, The Balance combed through studies investigating the design and implementation of publicly funded free tuition programs and spoke with several higher education policy experts. Here's what we learned about the current debate over free college in the U.S.—and more about how you can cut your college costs or even get free tuition through existing programs.

Key Takeaways

• Research shows free tuition programs encourage more students to attend college and increase graduation rates, which creates a better-educated workforce and higher-earning consumers who can help boost the economy. 
• Some programs are criticized for not paying students’ non-tuition expenses, not benefiting students who need assistance most, or steering students toward community college instead of four-year programs.  
• If you want to find out about free programs in your area, the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education has a searchable database. You’ll find the link further down in this article. 

Before diving into the weeds of the free college debate, it's important to note that not all free college programs are alike. Most publicly funded tuition assistance programs are restricted to the first two years of study, typically at community colleges. Free college programs also vary widely in the ways they’re designed, funded, and structured:

• Last-dollar tuition-free programs : These programs cover any remaining tuition after a student has used up other financial aid , such as Pell Grants. Most state-run free college programs fall into this category. However, these programs don’t typically help with room and board or other expenses.
• First-dollar tuition-free programs : These programs pay for students' tuition upfront, although they’re much rarer than last-dollar programs. Any remaining financial aid that a student receives can then be applied to other expenses, such as books and fees. The California College Promise Grant is a first-dollar program because it waives enrollment fees for eligible students.
• Debt-free programs : These programs pay for all of a student's college expenses , including room and board, guaranteeing that they can graduate debt-free. But they’re also much less common, likely due to their expense.  

Proponents often argue that publicly funded college tuition programs eventually pay for themselves, in part by giving students the tools they need to find better jobs and earn higher incomes than they would with a high school education. The anticipated economic impact, they suggest, should help ease concerns about the costs of public financing education. Here’s a closer look at the arguments for free college programs.

A More Educated Workforce Benefits the Economy

Morley Winograd, President of the Campaign for Free College Tuition, points to the economic and tax benefits that result from the higher wages of college grads. "For government, it means more revenue," said Winograd in an interview with The Balance—the more a person earns, the more they will likely pay in taxes . In addition, "the country's economy gets better because the more skilled the workforce this country has, the better [it’s] able to compete globally." Similarly, local economies benefit from a more highly educated, better-paid workforce because higher earners have more to spend. "That's how the economy grows," Winograd explained, “by increasing disposable income."

According to Harris, the return on a government’s investment in free college can be substantial. "The additional finding of our analysis was that these things seem to consistently pass a cost-benefit analysis," he said. "The benefits seem to be at least double the cost in the long run when we look at the increased college attainment and the earnings that go along with that, relative to the cost and the additional funding and resources that go into them." 

Free College Programs Encourage More Students to Attend

Convincing students from underprivileged backgrounds to take a chance on college can be a challenge, particularly when students are worried about overextending themselves financially. But free college programs tend to have more success in persuading students to consider going, said Winograd, in part because they address students' fears that they can't afford higher education . "People who wouldn't otherwise think that they could go to college, or who think the reason they can't is [that] it's too expensive, [will] stop, pay attention, listen, decide it's an opportunity they want to take advantage of, and enroll," he said.

According to Harris, students also appear to like the certainty and simplicity of the free college message. "They didn't want to have to worry that next year they were not going to have enough money to pay their tuition bill," he said. "They don't know what their finances are going to look like a few months down the road, let alone next year, and it takes a while to get a degree. So that matters." 

Free college programs can also help send "a clear and tangible message" to students and their families that a college education is attainable for them, said Michelle Dimino, an Education Director with Third Way. This kind of messaging is especially important to first-generation and low-income students, she said. 

Free College Increases Graduation Rates and Financial Security

Free tuition programs appear to improve students’ chances of completing college. For example, Harris noted that his research found a meaningful link between free college tuition and higher graduation rates. "What we found is that it did increase college graduation at the two-year college level, so more students graduated than otherwise would have." 

Free college tuition programs also give people a better shot at living a richer, more comfortable life, say advocates. "It's almost an economic necessity to have some college education," noted Winograd. Similar to the way a high school diploma was viewed as crucial in the 20th century, employees are now learning that they need at least two years of college to compete in a global, information-driven economy. "Free community college is a way of making that happen quickly, effectively, and essentially," he explained. 

Free community college isn’t a universally popular idea. While many critics point to the potential costs of funding such programs, others identify issues with the effectiveness and fairness of current attempts to cover students’ college tuition. Here’s a closer look at the concerns about free college programs.

It Would Be Too Expensive

The idea of free community college has come under particular fire from critics who worry about the cost of social spending. Since community colleges aren't nearly as expensive as four-year colleges—often costing thousands of dollars a year—critics argue that individuals can often cover their costs using other forms of financial aid . But, they point out, community college costs would quickly add up when paid for in bulk through a free college program: Biden’s proposed free college plan would have cost $49.6 billion in its first year, according to an analysis from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Some opponents argue that the funds could be put to better use in other ways, particularly by helping students complete their degrees.

Free College Isn't Really Free

One of the most consistent concerns that people have voiced about free college programs is that they don’t go far enough. Even if a program offers free tuition, students will need to find a way to pay for other college-related expenses , such as books, room and board, transportation, high-speed internet, and, potentially, child care. "Messaging is such a key part of this," said Dimino. Students "may apply or enroll in college, understanding it's going to be free, but then face other unexpected charges along the way." 

It's important for policymakers to consider these factors when designing future free college programs. Otherwise, Dimino and other observers fear that students could potentially wind up worse off if they enroll and invest in attending college and then are forced to drop out due to financial pressures. 

Free College Programs Don’t Help the Students Who Need Them Most

Critics point out that many free college programs are limited by a variety of quirks and restrictions, which can unintentionally shut out deserving students or reward wealthier ones. Most state-funded free college programs are last-dollar programs, which don’t kick in until students have applied financial aid to their tuition. That means these programs offer less support to low-income students who qualify for need-based aid—and more support for higher-income students who don’t.

Community College May Not Be the Best Path for All Students

Some critics also worry that all students will be encouraged to attend community college when some would have been better off at a four-year institution. Four-year colleges tend to have more resources than community colleges and can therefore offer more support to high-need students. 

In addition, some research has shown that students at community colleges are less likely to be academically successful than students at four-year colleges, said Dimino. "Statistically, the data show that there are poorer outcomes for students at community colleges […] such as lower graduation rates and sometimes low transfer rates from two- to four-year schools." 

With Congress focused on other priorities, a nationwide free college program is unlikely to happen anytime soon. However, some states and municipalities offer free tuition programs, so students may be able to access some form of free college, depending on where they live. A good resource is the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education’s searchable database of Promise Programs , which lists more than 100 free community college programs, though the majority are limited to California residents.

In the meantime, school leaders and policymakers may shift their focus to other access and equity interventions for low-income students. For example, higher education experts Eileen Strempel and Stephen Handel published a book in 2021 titled "Beyond Free College: Making Higher Education Work for 21st Century Students." The book argues that policymakers should focus more strongly on college completion, not just college access. "There hasn't been enough laser-focus on how we actually get people to complete their degrees," noted Strempel in an interview with The Balance. 

Rather than just improving access for low-income college students, Strempel and Handel argue that decision-makers should instead look more closely at the social and economic issues that affect students , such as food and housing insecurity, child care, transportation, and personal technology. For example, "If you don't have a computer, you don't have access to your education anymore," said Strempel. "It's like today's pencil."

Saving money on college costs can be challenging, but you can take steps to reduce your cost of living. For example, if you're interested in a college but haven't yet enrolled, pay close attention to where it's located and how much residents typically pay for major expenses, such as housing, utilities, and food. If the college is located in a high-cost area, it could be tough to justify the living expenses you'll incur. Similarly, if you plan to commute, take the time to check gas or public transportation prices and calculate how much you'll likely have to spend per month to go to and from campus several times a week. 

Now that more colleges offer classes online, it may also be worth looking at lower-cost programs in areas that are farther from where you live, particularly if they allow you to graduate without setting foot on campus. Also, check out state and federal financial aid programs that can help you slim down your expenses, or, in some cases, pay for them completely. Finally, look into need-based and merit-based grants and scholarships that can help you cover even more of your expenses. Also, consider applying to no-loan colleges , which promise to help students graduate without going into debt.

Should community college be free?

It’s a big question with varying viewpoints. Supporters of free community college cite the economic contributions of a more educated workforce and the individual benefit of financial security, while critics caution against the potential expense and the inefficiency of last-dollar free college programs. 

What states offer free college?

More than 30 states offer some type of tuition-free college program, including Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington State. The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education lists over 100 last-dollar community college programs and 16 first-dollar community college programs, though the majority are limited to California residents.

Is there a free college?

There is no such thing as a truly free college education. But some colleges offer free tuition programs for students, and more than 30 states offer some type of tuition-free college program. In addition, students may also want to check out employer-based programs. A number of big employers now offer to pay for their employees' college tuition . Finally, some students may qualify for enough financial aid or scholarships to cover most of their college costs.

Scholarships360. " Which States Offer Tuition-Free Community College? "

The White House. “ Build Back Better Framework ,” see “Bringing Down Costs, Reducing Inflationary Pressures, and Strengthening the Middle Class.”

The White House. “ Fact Sheet: How the Build Back Better Plan Will Create a Better Future for Young Americans ,” see “Education and Workforce Opportunities.”

Coast Community College District. “ California College Promise Grant .”

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “ The Dollars and Cents of Free College ,” see “Biden’s Free College Plan Would Pay for Itself Within 10 Years.”

Third Way. “ Why Free College Could Increase Inequality .”

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “ The Dollars and Cents of Free College ,” see “Free-College Programs Have Different Effects on Race and Class Equity.”

University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. “ College Promise Programs: A Comprehensive Catalog of College Promise Programs in the United States .”

• How to Write a College Essay

College admissions experts offer tips on selecting a topic as well as writing and editing the essay.

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Students can go online to review essay requirements for the colleges they want to apply to, such as word limits and essay topics. Many students may start with the Common App, an application platform accepted by more than 1,000 schools.

For college applicants, the essay is the place to showcase their writing skills and let their unique voice shine through.

"The essays are important in part because this is a student's chance to really speak directly to the admissions office," says Adam Sapp, assistant vice president and director of admissions at Pomona College in California.

Prospective college students want their essay, sometimes called a personal statement, to make a good impression and boost their chances of being accepted, but they have only several hundred words to make that happen.

This can feel like a lot of pressure.

"I think this is the part of the application process that students are sometimes most challenged by," says Niki Barron, associate dean of admission at Hamilton College in New York, "because they're looking at a blank piece of paper and they don't know where to get started."

That pressure may be amplified as many colleges have gone test optional in recent years, meaning that ACT and SAT scores will be considered if submitted but are not required. Other schools have gone test-blind and don't consider such scores at all. In the absence of test scores, some admissions experts have suggested that more attention will be paid to other parts of an application, such as the essay.

But just as each applicant is unique, so are college admissions policies and priorities.

"Being test optional hasn't changed how we use essays in our selection process, and I wouldn't say that the essay serves as a substitute for standardized test scores," Barron wrote in an email. "A student's academic preparation for our classroom experience is always front and center in our application review process."

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against college admissions policies that consider an applicant's race. The ruling, though, does not prohibit students from writing essays on how their race has affected them, which experts say could significantly affect how students approach this portion of their applications.

Essay-writing tips offered by experts emphasize the importance of being concise, coherent, congenial, unique, honest and accurate. An applicant should also flex some intellectual muscle and include vivid details or anecdotes.

From brainstorming essay topics to editing the final draft, here's what students need to know about crafting a strong college application essay.

Getting Started on the College Essay

How long should a college essay be, how to pick a college essay topic, writing the college essay, how the affirmative action ruling could change college essays, editing and submitting the college essay.

A good time for students to begin working on their essays is the summer before senior year, experts say, when homework and extracurricular activities aren't taking up time and mental energy.

Starting early will also give students plenty of time to work through multiple drafts of an essay before college application deadlines, which can be as early as November for students applying for early decision or early action .

Students can go online to review essay requirements for the colleges they want to apply to, such as word limits and essay topics. Many students may start with the Common App , an application platform accepted by more than 1,000 schools. Students can submit that application to multiple schools.

Another option is the Coalition Application, an application platform accepted by more than 130 schools. Students applying through this application choose from one of six essay prompts to complete and include with their application.

In addition to the main essay, some colleges ask applicants to submit one or more additional writing samples. Students are often asked to explain why they are interested in a particular school or academic field in these supplemental essays , which tend to be shorter than the main essay.

Students should budget more time for the writing process if the schools they're applying to ask for supplemental essays.

"Most selective colleges will ask for more than one piece of writing. Don't spend all your time working on one long essay and then forget to devote energy to other parts of the application," Sapp says.

Though the Common App notes that "there are no strict word limits" for its main essay, it suggests a cap of about 650 words. The Coalition Application website says its essays should be between 500 and 650 words.

"While we won't, as a rule, stop reading after 650 words, we cannot promise that an overly wordy essay will hold our attention for as long as you'd hoped it would," the Common App website states.

The word count is much shorter for institution-specific supplemental essays, which are typically around 250 words.

The first and sometimes most daunting step in the essay writing process is figuring out what to write about.

There are usually several essay prompts to choose from on a college application. They tend to be broad, open-ended questions, giving students the freedom to write about a wide array of topics, Barron says.

The essay isn't a complete autobiography, notes Mimi Doe, co-founder of Top Tier Admissions, a Massachusetts-based advising company. "It's overwhelming to think of putting your whole life in one essay," she says.

Rather, experts say students should narrow their focus and write about a specific experience, hobby or quirk that reveals something personal, like how they think, what they value or what their strengths are. Students can also write about something that illustrates an aspect of their background. These are the types of essays that typically stand out to admissions officers, experts say. Even an essay on a common topic can be compelling if done right.

Students don't have to discuss a major achievement in their essay – a common misconception. Admissions officers who spoke with U.S. News cited memorable essays that focused on more ordinary topics, including fly-fishing, a student's commute to and from school and a family's dining room table.

What's most important, experts say, is that a college essay is thoughtful and tells a story that offers insight into who a student is as a person.

"Think of the college essay as a meaningful glimpse of who you are beyond your other application materials," Pierre Huguet, CEO and founder of admissions consulting firm H&C Education, wrote in an email. "After reading your essay, the reader won't fully know you – at least not entirely. Your objective is to evoke the reader's curiosity and make them eager to get to know you."

If students are having trouble brainstorming potential topics, they can ask friends or family members for help, says Stephanie Klein Wassink, founder of Winning Applications and AdmissionsCheckup, Connecticut-based college admissions advising companies. Klein Wassink says students can ask peers or family members questions such as, "What are the things you think I do well?" Or, "What are my quirks?"

The essay should tell college admissions officers something they don't already know, experts say.

Some experts encourage students to outline their essay before jumping into the actual writing, though of course everyone's writing process differs.

The first draft of an essay doesn't need to be perfect. "Just do a brain dump," Doe says. "Don't edit yourself, just lay it all out on the page."

If students are having a hard time getting started, they should focus on their opening sentence, Doe suggests. She says an essay's opening sentence, or hook, should grab the reader's attention.

Doe offered an example of a strong hook from the essay of a student she worked with:

"I first got into politics the day the cafeteria outlawed creamed corn."

"I want to know about this kid," she says. "I’m interested."

The key to a good college essay is striking a balance between being creative and not overdoing it, Huguet says. He advises students to keep it simple.

"The college essay is not a fiction writing contest," Huguet says. "Admissions committees are not evaluating you on your potential as the next writer of the Great American Novel."

He adds that students should write in the voice they use to discuss meaningful topics with someone they trust. It's also wise to avoid hyperbole, as that can lose the readers' trust, as well as extraneous adverbs and adjectives, Huguet says.

"Thinking small, when done right, means paying close attention to the little things in your life that give it meaning in unique ways," he says. "It means, on the one hand, that you don’t have to come up with a plan for world peace, but it also means thinking small enough to identify details in your life that belong only to you."

The Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action has left some students feeling in limbo with how to approach their essays. Some are unsure whether to include racial identifiers while others feel pressure to exclude it, says Christopher Rim, CEO and founder of Command Education, an admissions consulting company.

"For instance, some of our Asian students have been concerned that referencing their culture or race in their essay could negatively impact them (even moreso than before)," Rim wrote in an email. He noted that many students he works with had already begun crafting their essays before the ruling came. "Some of our other students have felt pressure to disclose their race or share a story of discrimination or struggle because they expect those stories to be received better by admissions officers."

Some of the uneasiness stems from what feels like a contradictory message from the court, Rim says. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., said the ruling shouldn't be construed "as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise." But he added that colleges may consider race only if it's tied to an applicant’s individual experiences or qualities, such as demonstrating courage against discrimination.

Personal essays shouldn't serve as a way for universities to ask students about their race as a means to admit them on such basis, Roberts added.

Rim says he expects there to be a lot of confusion from parents and students as they navigate that line when writing their essay. He says his guidance will vary with each student depending on their specific situation.

"For a student from an immigrant family, sharing their racial and cultural background may be integral to understanding their identity and values and therefore should be included in the essay," he says. "On the other hand, a student who has never meaningfully considered ways in which their race has shaped their life experience and worldview should not push themselves to do so in their essay simply because they believe it will better their chances."

While admissions officers try to learn about students via the essay, they are also gauging writing skills, so students want to make sure they submit top-notch work.

"The best writing is rewriting," Sapp says. "You should never be giving me your first draft."

When reviewing a first essay draft, students should make sure their writing is showing, not telling, Huguet says. This means students should show their readers examples that prove they embody certain traits or beliefs, as opposed to just stating that they do. Doing so is like explaining a joke to someone who's already laughed at it, he says.

"Let’s say, for example, that the whole point of a certain applicant’s essay is to let admissions officers know that she thinks outside the box. If she feels the need to end her essay with a sentence like, 'And so, this anecdote shows that I think outside the box,' she’s either underestimating the power of her story (or the ability of her reader to understand it), or she hasn’t done a good enough job in telling it yet," Huguet says. "Let your readers come to their own conclusions. If your story is effective, they’ll come to the conclusions you want them to."

After editing their essay, students should seek outside editing help, experts recommend. While there are individuals and companies that offer paid essay help – from editing services to essay-writing boot camps – students and families may not be able to afford the associated fees. Some providers may offer scholarships or other financial aid for their services.

The availability and level of feedback from free essay advising services vary. Some college prep companies offer brief consultations at no charge. Free essay workshops may also be available through local high schools, public libraries or community organizations. Khan Academy, a free online education platform, also offers a series of videos and other content to guide students through the essay writing process.

Colleges themselves may also have resources, Barron notes, pointing to pages on Hamilton's website that offer writing tips as well as examples of successful admissions essays. Likewise, Hamilton also holds virtual panel discussions on writing admissions essays.

Students have other options when it comes to essay help. They can ask peers, teachers, school counselors and family members for help polishing an essay. Huguet says it's typically wise to prioritize quality over quantity when it comes to seeking feedback on essays. Too many perspectives can become counterproductive, he says.

"While it can be valuable to have different perspectives, it's best to seek out individuals who are experts in the writing process," he says. "Instructors or professors can be helpful, particularly if they possess subject expertise and can provide guidance on refining arguments, structure and overall coherence."

Proofreaders should not change the tone of the essay. "Don't let anyone edit out your voice," Doe cautions.

And while proofreading is fair game, having someone else write your essay is not.

When an essay is ready to go, students will generally submit it online along with the rest of their application. On the Common App, for example, students copy and paste their essay into a text box.

Sapp says even though students often stress about the essay in particular, it's not the only thing college admissions officers look at. "The essay is the window, but the application is the house," he says. "So let's not forget that an application is built of many pieces."

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How to Write a Personal Essay for Your College Application

What does it take to land in the “accept” (instead of “reject”) pile?

How can you write an essay that helps advance you in the eyes of the admissions officers and makes a real impression? Here are some tips to get you started.

• Start early.  Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself time when you don’t have other homework or extracurriculars hanging over your head to work on the essay.
• Keep the focus narrow.  Your essay does not have to cover a massive, earth-shattering event. Some people in their teens haven’t experienced a major life event. Some people have. Either way, it’s okay.
• Be yourself.  Whether writing about a painful experience or a more simple experience, use the narrative to be vulnerable and honest about who you are. Use words you would normally use. Trust your voice and the fact that your story is interesting enough in that no one else has lived it.
• Be creative.  “Show, don’t tell,” and that applies here — to an extent. The best essays typically do both. You can help your reader see and feel what you are describing by using some figurative language throughout your piece.
• Make a point. As you finish your final body paragraphs ask yourself “So what?” This will help you hone in on how to end your essay in a way that elevates it into a story about an insight or discovery you made about yourself, rather than just being about an experience you had.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

We’ve all heard about the dreaded “college essay,” the bane of every high school senior’s existence. This daunting element of the college application is something that can create angst for even the most accomplished students.

• AA Amy Allen is a writer, educator, and lifelong learner. Her freelance writing business,  All of the Write Words , focuses on providing high school students with one-on-one feedback to guide them through the college application process and with crafting a thoughtful personal essay. A dedicated poet, Amy’s work has also been published in several journals including  Pine Row Press ,  Months to Years,  and  Atlanta Review .

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

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Lowering the cost of public college is essential and reasonable

February 9, 2022 Opinions Editor Opinion , Opinions , Opinions 1

Ethan Kuhstoss, Contributing Writer

That’s the average cost of public university tuition over a four year period. That number doesn’t account for housing, fees, student loan interest, textbooks and the many other expenses associated with attending college. When taking these costs into consideration, a bachelor’s degree can cost more than $400,000.

For the majority of students — primarily low-income students of color — salvaging these costs is simply not feasible, saddling young professionals with overwhelming debt.

To ensure that hard-working students can obtain higher education while affording basic needs, it is imperative to vastly reduce or eliminate the cost of public four-year universities before it is entirely unobtainable for lower-income Americans.

Over 60% of all college graduates receive their diplomas from public institutions according to the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. Despite the clear necessity of public colleges, a 2020 study from the College Board found that their exorbitant prices have caused the average graduate to saddle $27,000 in debt .

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed that, when adjusted for inflation, the annual cost to attend a public four-year institution has increased by over 148% since 1970 . However, the average household income has not kept pace; with an increase in income of only 48.6% , families today have a far more difficult time financing their childrens’ education than the previous generation.

Public colleges earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year from tuition and federal subsidies , yet fail to return their services in an affordable manner. In turn, the totality of student debt has passed $1.73 trillion .

As American student loan debt totals surpass Canada’s GDP , the racial wealth gap also continues to widen. In 2020, Black Americans were the group most likely to be paying off student loan debt and to be behind on payments.

65% of Black students are financially independent and have the highest rate of full-time employment compared to other groups of students, according to a 2018 study from the United Negro College Fund. Moreover, this leaves them more vulnerable to the socio-economic effects of COVID-19, as job insecurity can make or break their ability to afford college.

It isn’t as simple as choosing a cheaper school, either. A study from the Institute for Higher Educational Policy revealed that lower-income students can only afford one to five percent of colleges; compounded with the fact that poor families have a shorter travel radius due to a lack of transportation, it’s clear why college is so unobtainable for so many.

With the infeasibility of higher education, it is no surprise that the United States’ college graduation rates are quickly falling behind other developed nations. In a 2012 OECD study , America scored 19th out of 28 countries.

One of the most common concerns about lowering the cost of public universities is that higher education would lose its value. Thus, American students display their willingness to “go the extra mile” by putting their financial security at risk, showing future employers that they are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.

This is an inaccurate and biased system, however. Poorer students assume far more risk and stress by enrolling in college, yet the end result appears the same. Can we really call America a meritocracy if disadvantaged populations have to work harder to get to the same position as those born more privileged than them?

Higher education significantly improves personal income , leading to increased revenue for every level of government through taxation. Additional spending money also stimulates more economic activity. Throughout their lifetime, bachelor’s degree holders inject $278,000 more into local economies than those who only graduated high school.

There are a number of avenues the government can pursue to lower the cost of public higher education. In addition to improving economic activity, Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-V.T., Tax on Wall Street Speculation Act illustrates how we can raise $2.4 trillion for educational funding in the next decade.

The act gains funding through the implementation of taxes under 1% on the trade of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Considering the price tag of public universities is $79 billion annually, Sanders’ plan would solely fund the price of tuition. This legislation is not unprecedented, either; financial transaction taxes (FTT) were imposed in America from 1914 to 1965 , demonstrating that such a plan is feasible.

The ethical, rational and feasible decision to lower the price of public universities has been delayed for far too long. The American government has a moral obligation to ensure equality for academic opportunities to disadvantaged populations.

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The Argument for Tuition-Free College

Soaring tuitions and student loan debt are placing higher education beyond the reach of many American students. It’s time to make college free and accessible to all.

by Keith Ellison

April 14, 2016

(Shutterstock)

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act into law, laying the groundwork for the largest system of publicly funded universities in the world. Some of America's greatest colleges, including the University of Minnesota, were created by federal land grants, and were known as "democracy's colleges" or "people's colleges."

But that vision of a "people's college" seems awfully remote to a growing number of American students crushed under soaring tuitions and mounting debt. One hundred and fifty years after Lincoln made his pledge, it's time to make public colleges and universities free for every American.

This idea is easier than it looks. For most of our nation's history, public colleges and universities have been much more affordable than they are today, with lower tuition, and financial aid that covered a much larger portion of the costs . The first step in making college accessible again, and returning to an education system that serves every American, is addressing the student loan debt crisis.

The cost of attending a four-year college has increased by 1,122 percent since 1978 . Galloping tuition hikes have made attending college more expensive today than at any point in U.S. history. At the same time, debt from student loans has become the largest form of personal debt in America-bigger than credit card debt and auto loans. Last year, 38 million American students owed more than $1.3 trillion in student loans.

Once, a degree used to mean a brighter future for college graduates, access to the middle class, and economic stability.

Today, student loan debt increases inequality and makes it harder for low-income graduates, particularly those of color , to buy a house, open a business, and start a family.

The solution lies in federal investments to states to lower the overall cost of public colleges and universities. In exchange, states would commit to reinvesting state funds in higher education. Any public college or university that benefited from the reinvestment program would be required to limit tuition increases. This federal-state partnership would help lower tuition for all students. Schools that lowered tuition would receive additional federal grants based on the degree to which costs are lowered.

Reinvesting in higher education programs like Pell Grants and work-study would ensure that Pell and other forms of financial aid that students don't need to pay back would cover a greater portion of tuition costs for low-income students. In addition, states that participate in this partnership would ensure that low-income students who attend state colleges and universities could afford non-tuition expenses like textbooks and housing fees . This proposal is one way to ensure that no student graduates with loans to pay back.

If the nation can provide hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and billions of dollars more to Wall Street , we can afford to pay for public higher education. A tax on financial transactions like derivatives and stock trades would cover the cost. Building a truly affordable higher education system is an investment that would pay off economically.

Eliminating student loan debt is the first step, but it's not the last. Once we ensure that student loan debt isn't a barrier to going to college, we should reframe how we think about higher education. College shouldn't just be debt free-it should be free. Period.

We all help pay for our local high schools and kindergartens, whether or not we send our kids to them. And all parents have the option of choosing public schools, even if they can afford private institutions. Free primary and secondary schooling is good for our economy, strengthens our democracy, and most importantly, is critical for our children's health and future. Educating our kids is one of our community's most important responsibilities, and it's a right that every one of us enjoys. So why not extend public schooling to higher education as well?

Some might object that average Americans should not have to pay for students from wealthy families to go to school. But certain things should be guaranteed to all Americans, poor or rich. It's not a coincidence that some of the most important social programs in our government's history have applied to all citizens, and not just to those struggling to make ends meet.

Universal programs are usually stronger and more stable over the long term, and they're less frequently targeted by budget cuts and partisan attacks. Public schools have stood the test of time-let's make sure public colleges and universities do, too.

The United States has long been committed to educating all its people, not only its elites.

This country is also the wealthiest in the history of the world. We can afford to make college an option for every American family.

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Education should be a right not a privilege

1. introduction.

Education is a fundamental right of every human being. It is a basic human right which serves as the foundation for securing other human rights. An educated society is enabled to participate in democratic decision-making and to achieve a better quality of life. Furthermore, access to education is considered one of the key factors in lifting people out of poverty. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 stated that all children, irrespective of gender, race, or any other characteristics, have the right to free and compulsory education. The declaration further states that higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Over the years, various international bodies, the government, and non-government organizations have stressed the need for increasing access to education. According to a report by UNESCO, more than 113 million children are deprived of access to primary education, and over 60% of those are girls. The same report states that more than 758 million adults are illiterate, most of them women. Factors contributing to this gender and regional disparity are plentiful and often rooted in traditional beliefs and practices within the global society. These are a few examples of the work that still needs to be done in striving to achieve universal education. This goal is one shared by countless organizations worldwide. Despite these discouraging statistics, great progress and positive change have been made in recent decades. This makes the hope of achieving worldwide education even more realistic and attainable.

1.1 Importance of Education

Education is a tool which can help individuals move from difficult circumstances. In these award-winning novels, Kozol shows the reader how education can be life-changing for students living in lower-income housing areas. Students in poorer districts face many obstacles. For example, at a school in Camden, New Jersey, a teacher gave his students an assignment to decorate a folder. These students did not know how to complete the task, showing that they do not even possess the knowledge to do something as simple as decorating a folder. Imagine if these students had the chance to leave these prejudices behind and move on to college, the workforce, or better living conditions. Imagine what it would feel like for the students and their parents to be the first to experience a college education or to escape poverty. In today's society, where there are so many accommodations to help students learn virtually and digitally, there still exist communities and organizations that do not have enough funds to provide the necessary materials and services for learning. This summer, I personally experienced this when I visited a few elementary schools in Ethiopia. While visiting the schools, I felt a sort of guilt because the kids in these schools were so excited to go to school and learn, and looking around at their environment, one could see that the services they provide to these eager children are far from adequate. There aren't enough chairs, and there is only one main board used for teaching, making it difficult for students to see the board. In the US, it's hard to find a classroom today that does not possess any of these resources. These kids in Ethiopia are hardly being set up for success, and one could argue that someone in such a predicament could not succeed without making significant changes to their current state. A step in the right direction for these children would be the proper dissemination of educational resources.

1.2 Education as a Privilege

The dominant view of an American education is that it serves a public function and provides public benefits. With a widely accepted understanding that all children have a right to free public education, education is generally perceived as a great equalizer that allows children from disadvantaged backgrounds to achieve the American dream. A corollary to this perception is the belief that increasing educational attainment will necessarily yield greater individual and societal economic returns. But does equal opportunity in education really exist? Can increasing educational attainment narrow the gap between rich and poor? And how much does education really matter in providing better future economic opportunities? These questions lie at the heart of public debate about the relationship between education and economic mobility. When we consider increasing educational opportunities as a policy lever for providing economic mobility, it is essential to differentiate between education as a public good and education as a private good—in other words, to what extent does investment in higher education benefit the individual, as opposed to benefiting the public at large. This paper asserts that various types of education serve both public and private functions and increasing educational opportunities to achieve economic equality is not as simple as increasing investment in public education. The distinction between education as a public and a private good clarifies the ways in which education can promote economic mobility and provides guidance for policy decisions aimed at increasing educational opportunities for disadvantaged groups.

2. Education as a Right

Education is formally recognized as a universalizing factor. In other words, it is perceived as the principal means by which the status of the individual and the well-being of the nation can be advanced. This means that everyone has the right to an education which will allow them to develop their full potential as a human being and a member of society. However, for the 870 million illiterate adults in the world and the 115 million children not in education, this right is still not a reality. If the internationally agreed goals to increase the level of education in the world by 2015 are to be met, then the education of those currently excluded from the system must be the priority. The main goal of education as a universal right must be translated into a reality. Access to education is a prerequisite to the realization of education as a right. This is widely recognized, and developed countries have typically made great progress towards achieving the goal of universal primary education. Primary education continues to be comparatively accessible in most regions, and thus the main focus for proponents of education as a right is the achievement of universal secondary education of high quality. High-quality education is vital in equipping individuals with the skills and knowledge to develop their full potential. This is the only means by which the vast socio-economic disparities between individuals and nations can be reduced. Currently, in many parts of the developing world, it is the children of the wealthy who have access to high-quality education. Thus, it is perpetuated that the present generation of the poor will be the next generation of the poor. This cycle of poverty will only be broken with free, high-quality education for all.

2.1 Access to Education

Universal access to education has been the primary goal of the international community for the past two decades. The World Declaration on Education for All (1990) and the Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs (1990) both make the inclusive and equitable provision of education a prime directive. Six years later, at the Dakar World Education Forum, it was reaffirmed that education should be available and accessible to all. To this aim, there is an explicit focus on the needs of the disadvantaged, to ensure that the playing field is made even for all groups and individuals. It is necessary then to examine the extent to which this goal has been realized, by exploring different social groups' ability to access education, both in terms of their experiences once inside the system and the many barriers preventing them from doing so. Traditionally, the first step on the educational ladder is the one of entry into primary schooling. By ensuring education is somewhat equitable at this early stage, it is hoped that later disparities can be avoided. The provision of six years basic education for children is one specifically stated Millennium Development Goal, in the endeavor to ensure at least a minimum level of education is reached by young people globally. Though the goal for young children in developing nations has been realizing parity with those in developed nations, it is difficult to define a baseline for equality. This is because of the necessity of taking into account different types of social and economic development, meaning equality of provision must be relative to each country's needs. However, clear disparities can be seen. The enrollment figures in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are 63% and 67% respectively, significantly lower than the 90-100% found in developed nations. A similar trend is seen in the proportion of children completing primary education, the majority of dropouts being in the same two regions. The quality of the education being provided here is also important. According to studies of children's abilities to read and write, many are failing to acquire basic skills, showing that the efficacy of the system is just as vital as the access to it. Step one on the ladder is therefore a rung too high for many, with failure to attain this early level of education having severe repercussions on the opportunities available later in life.

2.2 Benefits of Education for All

Education is an important tool that is applied in the contemporary world to succeed, as it mitigates the challenges which are faced in life. The knowledge gained through education enables individuals' potential to be optimally utilized owing to training of the human mind. This opens doors of opportunities and enables individuals to achieve better prospects in career growth. Education has played a paramount role in the modern industrial world. This is attributed to the fact that prospective employees must be adequately qualified to perform various tasks effectively. Vocational education training can be provided for a number of jobs like healthcare, banking, agriculture, technical sales, and marketing. An individual cannot work without proper training. For instance, in almost all the states of India, ration shops are provided on behalf of the public distribution system. The owners of these shops are properly trained in operating them. This is because without education, it would not have been possible to implement the PDS. These shop owners will have to write or read the bill provided by the customer. On the whole, this will improve the sale of products. High revenue is obtained from these jobs. So, again, there is ample importance of education.

2.3 Overcoming Barriers to Education

The key to realizing the dream of education for all is overcoming the numerous barriers that block the path to schooling. For some children, the most effective strategy may be targeted support to help them overcome specific barriers - for example, an indigenous education programme. For others, the most strategic approach may involve simultaneous efforts to remove a variety of barriers. The following strategies reflect experience and research with countries where there have been some advances in increasing educational participation by poor children and other marginalized groups. This is by no means a comprehensive list but it does provide suggestions on thinking through the barriers and on matching strategies to the specific needs of particular groups of children. - Direct incentives and community support: poor families frequently do not see the tangible benefits of education and prefer to have children earning money through work or contributing to household work. Changing this often requires a combination of targeted poverty reduction, removal of direct and indirect costs of schooling, and measures to make the schools more responsive and relevant to poor families. In some cases, direct cash transfers or food subsidies become necessary to allow poor children to attend and learn at school.

3. Conclusion

A good system of education is essential for every society. Education is an investment in human capital; it can have a great impact on a nation's growth and development. Social and economic growth of a nation is directly linked with high standard of education. A good education system will provide an environment of learning that will help to create a good professional by providing him various skills and knowledge to capture the world with his skill. An educated person has more chances of getting a good high paying job. It helps in developing the nation at faster rate. Education as a basic right for every citizen exemplifies the idea and belief that education is an essential tool for a person to create a better future. Education can construct a person's personality, help a person gain knowledge about the world that surrounds him and also teaches him to question, explore and discover the truth behind everything. Education brings awareness about social issues, helping the contemporary person to have better adaptation to the social environment in which he lives. Underprivileged people and poorer countries have a hard time dealing with education; it is difficult for them to get proper facilities and a good standard of education due to economic disparities. They have to face social, cultural or language discriminations which add up to their difficulties. Education is a weapon which can be used to remove all these difficulties which the contemporary person or a society faces. An underprivileged person or a person who has suffered given some disastrous economical condition can stand up again and get back his legacy by educating himself. An educated person has a higher chances of getting his job back or recovering from an economic or social loss. We know that there are almost 750 million illiterate adults in this world and two-thirds of them are women. A good system of education can help remove this problem. The government must play a very vital role in providing education for all. By making education as a fundamental right for all, the goal of ensuring education for all can be achieved. This will ensure that children and adults will get proper and meaningful education. Such education should help the person develop his skills of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership. It should also help to cultivate a keen desire for continuous learning. This will in turn provide ample opportunities for securing livelihood in the competitive global economic environment. An education which is for the poor and the underprivileged should in the end help poor people blend in with the rest of the society. All in all, education is an essential tool or weapon which can transform any situation, make a society or person more developed and above all it helps to build a better tomorrow.

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University Education Should be Free for all Students- IELTS Writing Task 2

Updated On Jan 25, 2024

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The Essay Writing section of the IELTS Writing Module can be a difficult task for many IELTS Aspirants. Thus, it is vital that you polish your essay writing skills before attempting the IELTS.

Below is a sample IELTS Essay for the IELTS Essay topic:

University education should be free for all students. To what extent agree or disagree?

Opinion Essay

Introduction

Sentences 1&2 – Summarise the topic with the use of synonyms to create a basic understanding.

Sentence 3 – Mention that the essay will understand the need to make university education free.

Body Paragraphs

Paragraph 1 – Talk about how high university fees affect a family and its finances.

Paragraph 2 – Mention the benefits of making university education free, like high attending rates and upliftment of adjacent pointers like happiness index, etc. Mention relevant examples here.

Paragraph 3 – Acknowledge the flipper side of the argument, but talk about the unending advantages of making university education free.

Restate your views.

Sample Essay 1

University education is among the costliest “investments” a person can make. Consequently, there has been a cry to formalize a law to make university education free for everyone in recent times so that everyone can avail it. I feel this is a positive step, and this essay will expand my understanding of why I agree with it.

To begin with, university education costs can run well into hundreds of thousands of dollars, which may not be financially viable for every person. In a realistic scenario, even if a family is well off financially, this can become a burden as many will take educational loans to cover these costs. On top of this, books, accommodation, food, and other essentials are not factored in the tuition fees. Hence, such astronomical education costs can be a pecuniary nightmare.

On the same note, making university education cheaper really unfurls a wave of universal availing of higher education. For instance, many European countries’ public colleges charge zero for their courses. These countries, like Sweden, Germany, Finland, etc., show a very high rate of education, along with other pointers like high per capita income, high happiness index, and low tax evasion rates. Making university education free not only increases education across a country but has a positive direct and indirect effect on so many germane lifestyle pointers.

Some believe that countries, governments in general, benefit from high education rates, while others remark that free university education for all can become an obligation for the government. I feel that there are other means and ways of earning money, and earning money at the cost of a deserving person’s future is outrightly wrong. Additionally, making higher education free has one too many benefits to ignore.

Hence, university education should be free for all students keeping in mind that it is embezzled neither by the country nor the students.

Sample Essay 2

Having a qualification of tertiary education has become essential in the present. It is generally believed that universities should not charge any fees whatsoever. I agree with the given notion considerably, and I will support my angle of view in subsequent paragraphs.

To commence with the agreement side, providing tertiary education for free can elevate the education level of a whole country. To elaborate, providing free education will encourage more and more students to enrol in university courses. Students who cannot afford to pay university fees and, therefore, opt to get jobs after secondary education will also receive an opportunity to educate themselves further. More students enrolling in universities will increase education overall in a country.

Moreover, providing free university education can lead to a country’s prosperous economy. To make it clear, it is generally noticed that people, who are university graduates, have a pay scale significantly higher than that of high school graduates as university students have received specialized education in a specific field and have honed their skills within that particular field. Providing free tertiary education can encourage more and more students to enrol and specialize in a specific area which will help them to secure a hefty paying job. It will eventually help the country’s economy to grow further.

Now, looking at the disagreement side, if higher education is provided for free, students might take it for granted and start to avoid their duties. The number of university dropouts will increase as students have not paid any fees, and they are not losing anything financially by dropping out. There is a possibility that students may get swayed by the lousy influence of their peers and may get involved in immoral activities like bullying or drug trafficking without fearing expulsion as they have not paid any fees.

To conclude, providing free tertiary education can help a nation achieve greater heights in terms of education level and economy, but it may come with a price of students not taking the free education seriously because of not having to pay any fees.

Meaning – give (something) legal or formal status. Example – The government formalized a law to protect our right to privacy.

Meaning – capable of working successfully; feasible. Example – Motorsports are introducing viable financial plans amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

• Astronomical 

Meaning – (of an amount) extremely large. Example – The college tuition fees are astronomical.

Meaning – make or become spread out. Example – The ship unfurled its sails.

• Outrightly  

Meaning – wholly and completely. Example – The way he stood against the teacher was outrightly wrong.

Meaning – to steal (money or property) despite being entrusted to take care of it Example – .The conman embezzled a huge amount of money from the poor people.

Meaning – relating to or consisting of money. Example – You should enrich your pecuniary knowledge and take care of your assets.

Meaning – bound to do certain things Example – We have an obligation to fulfil our duties towards our parents and country.

Meaning – the act of avoiding something that you do not want to do or deal with Example – Tax evasion is one of the prevalent crimes in our country.

Meaning – relevant and appropriate Example – His speech was germane to the event of the day.

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Soon after graduating with a Master’s in Literature from Southern Arkansas University, she joined an institute as an English language trainer. She has had innumerous student interactions and has produced a couple of research papers on English language teaching. She soon found that non-native speakers struggled to meet the English language requirements set by foreign universities. It was when she decided to jump ship into IELTS training. From then on, she has been mentoring IELTS aspirants. She joined IELTSMaterial about a year ago, and her contributions have been exceptional. Her essay ideas and vocabulary have taken many students to a band 9.

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Nehasri Ravishenbagam

Whitney Houston

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Posted on Apr 1, 2022

Having access to academic tuition at university is considered a basic right of everyone by some individuals and they believe that irrespective of their socioeconomic background students should get a chance to study free of charge. To my mind, introducing this idea in most societies may generate some social problems and can also result in universities losing their value. Enabling general access to university education in the modern world can lead to a serious repercussion. To elaborate this, easily accessible academic training will attract huge numbers of students and this will cause imbalance between the number of job hunters and vacancies available. Consequently, the country might end up with a rising population of specialists with a university degree who are unemployed due to the limited number of jobs offered. Furthermore, charging no fees for tertiary education can change students’ attitude towards university education. In other words, it is highly likely that the opportunity to acquire free knowledge at higher education institutions may be taken for granted in a long-term run. As a result, universities might lose their status as a supreme source of obtaining quality education. To illuatrate this, my cousin was granted a chance to study for free by an organization which helped ambitious young people to achieve their dream of studying at higher institutions. Even though he was initially extremely excited about training at university his interest started to decline as he was not paying tuition fees himself and thus did not realize the value of free education. To sum up, free and easily accessible education at the university level has some drawbacks, namely, social problems like unemployment among specialists with a university degree and the change of students’ attitude towards higher education. Therefore, I believe that this is rather a negative development for the society.

Band Score – 5

Concentrate on correct use of articles, punctuation and subject verb agreement.

Use more transitional words.

Since it is an opinion essay, you are also required to write one line of contrast after the two opinionated body paragraphs.

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Iqbal singh

Some people propose the idea that the cost of tertiary education of all students should be borne by the government to make education more accessible. I, however, do not agree with this proposition because in my opinion, doing so will do more harm than good.

The first and the foremost argument to support my view is that sponsoring the higher education of all students will put an enormous financial burden on government’s shoulders. As government has to spend its limited resources on various crucial aspects of a nation’s growth such as providing health care, developing infrastructure and conducting social welfare schemes, bearing the cost of all prospective students will result in a severe shortage of funds. To generate more funds, the government will have to either levy heavier taxes or reduce its spending on other areas. In both scenarios, the one who will be at a disadvantage is the common man. For example, a raise in taxes will give birth to inflation which will make it extremely difficult for people to even afford basic needs. Similarly, a reduction in governmental spending on pivotal areas will make those people suffer who rely heavily on govermental support.

Yet another argument is that making third-tier education cost free will also result in the system being abused. With college education becoming free, universities will get flooded with non-serious students who will take admission for the sole purpose of enjoying student life. This will not only affect the decorum of universities negatively but will also result in universities producing graduates with severely limited knowledge. This, in turn, can prove to be a hindrance in a country’s progression as the development of any nation relies on how well educated its citizens are. On top of that, implementing this system will also lead to higher drop-out rates. When the students will realise that they are not bound to pay even a single penny from their own pocket, they will not hesitate in leaving their education in the middle and thus wasting governmental resources. To conclude, without a doubt, providing university education to all is of paramount importance today to ensure the success of a nation, but making government bear its financial burden is not a judicious step as it will do more harm than any good. Nevertheless, the government must keep those students in mind who are either studious or extremely poor and help them in getting the college education by offering scholarships and interest-free loans.

Concentrate on correct use of articles, verb forms and punctuation.

Use C2 level of words.

Posted on Feb 22, 2022

Education is the key factor to assess the growth of an individual, society and a nation infact. It brings forth the innate talents of a person, thus making one capable and efficient. The more, the percentage of educated people in a country, the lesser the unemployment and the more developed it is. I believe that the education is also a basic necessity besides the food, clothing and shelter. But unfortunately, due to lack of money or facilities, many children are deprived of being educated. Hence ‘Free university education’ is need of the hour to break the shackles of unemployment and surge ahead.

I opine that each country has to set up an education fund from various taxes collected from the citizens. The best investment any country can make is in its future tax payers. Many destitute who cannot afford to meet the tuition fee expenses gets an access to education, thus increasing the average literacy rate of the country. The employment index goes high, thus increasing the number of tax payers which in turn increases the GDP. We come across many students who do part time jobs to earn a living and save money for studies. Such students can intensively and completely be dedicated to studies, if education is free.

Social equality is brought in the society irrespective of gender, caste, race, rich, poor etc. One can witness a rapid progress in technological innovations thus strengthening the roots of a nation. An educated society brings a major impact on the political system. Wise decisions can be made in electing the eligible and deserving leaders.

I find no significant and justifying reasons to disagree on this subject except for the one reason that some students might take studies for granted if it is provided at free of cost, although it might not be case with many.

To sum up, free education plays an integral role in success of an individual, society and nation as a whole. It helps for a country to grow financially, technologically and in allied areas.

Band score: 5

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Those Who Preach Free Speech Need to Practice It

Too many leaders, on campus and in government, are failing to uphold the First Amendment rights they claim to champion.

Updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on April 30, 2024

Say you’re a college senior, just a few weeks from graduation. For as long as you can remember—even back in high school, before you set foot on campus—older people have talked about free speech. More specifically, older people have talked about free speech and you : whether your generation understands it, whether you believe in it, whether you can handle it.

After watching some of those same people order crackdowns on campus protests over the past few days, you might have a few questions for them.

Last week, from New York to Texas, cops stormed college campuses clad in riot gear. They weren’t there to confront active shooters, thank goodness, or answer bomb threats. Instead, they were there to conduct mass arrests of students protesting the war in Gaza.

As the legal director of a First Amendment advocacy nonprofit, I teach students across the country that the government can’t silence speakers because of their beliefs, even—and perhaps especially—if those beliefs are unpopular or cause offense. That’s a foundational principle of free-speech law. But many of the crackdowns appear to be a direct reaction to the protesters’ views about Israel.

After sending a phalanx of state law-enforcement officers into the University of Texas at Austin campus, for example, Governor Greg Abbott announced on X that students “joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

Erwin Chemerinsky: No one has a right to protest in my home

But no First Amendment exception exists for “hate-filled” speech. And for good reason: In our pluralistic democracy, everyone has their own subjective idea of what, if any, speech is too “hateful” to hear, making an objective definition impossible. And empowering the government to draw that line will inevitably silence dissent.

At UT, the officers arrested scores of protesters for “ trespassing .” But the students don’t appear to have violated school rules. And you can’t trespass on a place where you have the right to be, as students at the public universities they attend clearly do. Even a cameraman for a local news station was tackled and arrested . The next day, the Travis County attorney’s office dropped all of the trespassing charges for lack of probable cause—a telling indicator of the disturbingly authoritarian response. (Shockingly, the cameraman does face a felony charge , for allegedly assaulting a police officer—an allegation difficult to square with video of his arrest.) The government can’t throw Americans in jail for exercising their First Amendment right to peaceful protest.

Governor Abbott’s illiberal show of force has no place in a free country. It’s especially galling given the governor’s previous posture as a stalwart defender of campus free speech: In June 2019, he signed a law prohibiting Texas’s public colleges and universities from shutting down campus speakers because of their ideology. So much for that.

Governor Abbott isn’t alone. During her congressional testimony earlier this month, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik pledged investigations of students and faculty who voiced allegedly anti-Semitic criticism of Israel and Zionism, and agreed—on the fly—to remove a professor from his position as a committee chair because of his speech.

Michael Powell: The unreality of Columbia’s ‘liberated zone’

Columbia is a private institution, so it isn’t bound by the First Amendment. But the university promises freedom of expression to its students and faculty—and Shafik’s willingness to sacrifice faculty and student rights to appease hostile members of Congress betrays those promises.

If such things had happened only at UT and Columbia, that would be bad enough—but the problem is spreading. At Emory University, in Atlanta, police officers reportedly used tear gas and Tasers against protesters. State troopers with rifles directed toward protesters stood watch on a rooftop at Ohio State University. At Indiana University, administrators rushed out a last-minute, overnight policy change to justify a similar show of force from law enforcement, resulting in 34 arrests. It’s hard to keep up.

Students nationwide are watching how the adults who professed to care about free speech are responding under pressure. And they are learning that those adults don’t really mean what they say about the First Amendment. That’s a dangerous lesson. Our schools and universities could still teach the country a better one.

“Free Speech 101” starts here: The First Amendment protects an enormous amount of speech, including speech that some, many, perhaps most Americans would find deeply offensive. You may not like pro-Palestine speech; you may not like pro-Israel speech. You may think some of it veers into bigotry. The answer is to ignore it, mock it, debate it, even counterprotest it. But don’t call in the SWAT team.

George Packer: The campus-left occupation that broke higher education

Granted, free speech is not without carefully designated exceptions, and these exceptions are important but narrow. True threats and intimidation, properly defined, are not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is discriminatory harassment. Violence is never protected.

And public universities can maintain reasonable “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech. That means, for example, that for the authorities to place a ban on playing heavily amplified sound right outside the dorms at 2 a.m. likely does not violate the First Amendment. A prohibition on camping overnight in the quad probably doesn’t either. And taking over a campus building, as Columbia students did early this morning , is not protected.

But the enforcement of these rules must be evenhanded and proportionate. The use of force should be a last resort. Students must be given clear notice about what conduct crosses a line. And any student facing punishment for an alleged infringement should receive a fair hearing. Consistency counts. Our leaders—in government, in university administration—must demonstrate their commitment to free expression in both word and deed.

Students are protesting on campuses nationwide, and they’re watching the reaction of university presidents and elected officials closely. The current moment presents a generational challenge: Do older people and people in authority really mean what they say about the First Amendment? Do they believe in free speech—and can they handle it? Right now, too many leaders are failing the test.

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Should A.I. Write Your College Essays?

Cartoon by Dave Granlund

College admissions officers—and high school students—wrestle with A.I.-generated college essays

Ritika Vakharia, a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Georgia, says she tried asking ChatGPT to produce ideas for college admissions essays. But she found the responses too broad and impersonal, even after she gave it details about her extracurricular activities, such as teaching dance classes to younger students.

Instead, she worked to come up with a more personal college application essay theme.

“I feel a little more pressure to create, like, this super unique, interesting topic,” Vakharia says, “because a basic one these days could just be generated by ChatGPT.”

The easy availability of A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT, which can manufacture humanlike text in response to short prompts, is upending the undergraduate application process at selective colleges. It’s either ushering in an era of automated plagiarism or of democratized student access to essay-writing help. Or maybe both.

The disruption comes at a turning point for U.S. institutions of higher education. After the Supreme Court ruled last June that race-based university admissions programs were illegal, some institutions hoped to rely more on essay questions about applicants’ upbringing, identities, and communities to help foster diversity on campus.

“It makes me sad,” Lee Coffin, the dean of admissions at Dartmouth College, said in a podcast last year that touched on A.I.-generated application essays. “The idea that this central component of a story could be manufactured by someone other than the applicant is disheartening.”

Ritika Vakharia is a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology in Georgia. She tried asking ChatGPT for ideas for her college admissions essays. She found the responses too broad and impersonal. She had even given it details about her extracurricular activities, including teaching dance classes to younger students.

So instead of using ChatGPT’s ideas, she decided to come up with a more personal essay theme.

A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT can manufacture humanlike text in response to short prompts. The availability of chatbots is changing the undergraduate application process at selective colleges. It’s either starting a time of automated plagiarism or of universal student access to essay-writing help. Or maybe both.

These technologies come at a turning point for U.S. institutions of higher education. The Supreme Court ruled last June that race-based university admissions programs were illegal. Some institutions hoped to rely more on essay questions about applicants’ upbringing, identities, and communities to help develop diversity on campus.

Alyssa Pointer/The New York Times

“I feel a little more pressure to create, like, this super unique, interesting topic because a basic one these days could just be generated by ChatGPT.” —Ritika Vakharia

New A.I. Tools

The personal essay has long been a staple of the application process at colleges. Admissions officers have often used applicants’ essays as a lens into their unique character, pluck, potential, and ability to handle adversity. As a result, some former students say they felt tremendous pressure to develop, or at least concoct, a singular personal writing voice.

But new A.I. tools now threaten to cast doubt on the legitimacy of applicants’ writing samples as authentic products of their intellect and creativity. That has forced colleges to rethink their admissions processes.

“Students on some level are going to have access to and use A.I.,” says Rick Clark, executive director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The big question is: How do we want to direct them, knowing that it’s out there and available to them?”

Some teachers are troubled by students using A.I. to write their college essays for deeper reasons: Outsourcing writing to bots could hinder students from developing important critical thinking and storytelling skills.

“Part of the process of the college essay is finding your writing voice through all of that drafting and revising,” says Susan Barber, an Advanced Placement English literature teacher at Midtown High School, a public school in Atlanta. “And I think that’s something that ChatGPT would be robbing them of.”

The personal essay has long been an important part of the application process at colleges. Admissions officers have used essays as a way to see into applicants’ unique character, potential, and ability to handle adversity. As a result, some former students say they felt tremendous pressure. They felt they had to develop, or at least concoct, a singular personal writing voice.

But new A.I. tools now threaten to cast doubt on the validity of applicants’ writing samples as real products of their intellect and creativity. Colleges are forced to rethink their admissions processes.

Some teachers are troubled by students using A.I. to write their college essays for deeper reasons. Using bots to write could keep students from developing important critical thinking and storytelling skills.

Kendrick Brinson/The New York Times

“Part of the process of the college essay is finding your writing voice . . . And I think that’s something that ChatGPT would be robbing them of.”  —Susan Barber, AP English literature Teacher in Atlanta

Last August, Barber asked her 12th-grade students to write college essays. Then she held class discussions about ChatGPT, cautioning students that using A.I. chatbots to generate ideas or writing could make their college essays sound too generic. She advised them to focus more on their personal views and voices.

Yet other educators say they hope the A.I. tools might have a democratizing effect. Wealthy high school students often have access to resources to help brainstorm, draft, and edit their college admissions essays. ChatGPT could play a similar role for students who lack such resources, especially those at large high schools where overworked college counselors have little time for individualized essay coaching.

“It’s free, it’s accessible, and it’s helpful,” says Clark. “It’s progress toward equity.”

At the same time, as colleges wrestle with just how to handle the explosion of literate A.I. bots, some students, like Kevin Jacob, a senior at the Gwinnett School, are unsure how to proceed.

“The vagueness and ambiguity,” Jacob says, “is kind of hard for us.”

Last August, Barber asked her 12th-grade students to write college essays. Then she held class discussions about ChatGPT. She warned students that using A.I. chatbots to generate ideas or writing could make their college essays sound too generic. She advised them to focus more on their personal views and voices.

Yet other educators say they hope the A.I. tools might have an equalizing effect. Wealthy high school students often have access to more resources. They get help to brainstorm, draft, and edit their college admissions essays. ChatGPT could play a similar role for students who lack such resources. It would especially help those at large high schools where overworked college counselors have little time for individualized essay coaching.

As colleges figure out how to handle the explosion of literate A.I. bots, some students, like Kevin Jacob, a senior at the Gwinnett School, are unsure how to proceed.

Natasha Singer writes about technology, business, and society for The New York Times .

Natasha Singer writes about technology, business, and society for  The   New York  Times .

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David French

Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out.

By David French

Opinion Columnist

I had my head in a law book when I heard the drums. That was the sound of the first campus protest I ever experienced. I’d come to Harvard Law School in the fall of 1991 as a graduate of a small, very conservative Christian college in Nashville. Many of my college classmates had passionate religious and political commitments, but street protest was utterly alien to the Christian culture of the school. We were rule followers, and public protest looked a bit too much like anarchy for our tastes.

But Harvard was different. The law school was every bit as progressive as my college was conservative, and protest was part of the fabric of student life, especially then. This is the era when a writer for GQ magazine, John Sedgwick, called the law school “ Beirut on the Charles ” because it was torn apart by disputes over race and sex. There were days when campus protests were festive, almost celebratory. There were other days when the campus was seething with rage and fury.

That first protest was in support of faculty diversity, and it was relatively benign. I walked outside and followed the sound of the drums. A group of roughly 100 protesters was marching in front of the law school library, and soon they were joined by an allied group of similar size from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. I watched as they danced, sang and listened to speeches by student activists and sympathetic professors. That first protest had an angry edge, but it was also completely peaceful and endlessly fascinating to a kid from a small town in Kentucky who’d never seen a drum circle before.

But things soon got worse, much worse. Protests got more unruly, and student activists got more aggressive. The entire campus was in a state of conflict. In Sedgwick’s words, students were “waging holy war on one another.” Small groups of students occupied administrative offices, and angry activists shouted down their political opponents in class and often attempted to intimidate them outside class. I was shouted down repeatedly, and twice I received disturbing handwritten notes in my campus mailbox in response to my anti-abortion advocacy. My student peers told me to “go die.”

Watching the protests and experiencing the shout-downs changed the course of my career. I was both enthralled by the power of protest and repulsed by the efforts to silence dissenters. Given the immense cultural influence of American higher education, I agreed with the Supreme Court’s famous words in the 1957 case Sweezy v. New Hampshire : “Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.” Those words, combined with my own negative encounters at Harvard, helped define my legal career. From that point forward, I would defend free speech.

It’s been more than 30 years since that first campus protest, and over that time I’ve seen countless protests, I’ve defended countless protesters — and I’ve even been protested against at several schools. In the course of those cases and confrontations, I’ve learned that the issue of campus protest is remarkably complex and that campus culture is at least as important as law and policy in setting the boundaries of debate.

There is profound confusion on campus right now around the distinctions among free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness. At the same time, some schools also seem confused about their fundamental academic mission. Does the university believe it should be neutral toward campus activism — protecting it as an exercise of the students’ constitutional rights and academic freedoms but not cooperating with student activists to advance shared goals — or does it incorporate activism as part of the educational process itself, including by coordinating with the protesters and encouraging their activism?

The simplest way of outlining the ideal university policy toward protest is to say that it should protect free speech, respect civil disobedience and uphold the rule of law. That means universities should protect the rights of students and faculty members on a viewpoint-neutral basis, and they should endeavor to make sure that every member of the campus community has the same access to campus facilities and resources.

That also means showing no favoritism among competing ideological groups in access to classrooms, in the imposition of campus penalties and in access to educational opportunities. All groups should have equal rights to engage in the full range of protected speech, including by engaging in rhetoric that’s hateful to express and painful to hear. Public chants like “Globalize the intifada” may be repugnant to many ears, but they’re clearly protected by the First Amendment at public universities and by policies protecting free speech and academic freedom at most private universities.

Still, reasonable time, place and manner restrictions are indispensable in this context. Time, place and manner restrictions are content-neutral legal rules that enable a diverse community to share the same space and enjoy equal rights.

Noise limits can protect the ability of students to study and sleep. Restricting the amount of time any one group can demonstrate on the limited open spaces on campus permits other groups to use the same space. If one group is permitted to occupy a quad indefinitely, for example, then that action by necessity excludes other organizations from the same ground. In that sense, indefinitely occupying a university quad isn’t simply a form of expression; it also functions as a form of exclusion. Put most simply, student groups should be able to take turns using public spaces, for an equal amount of time and during a roughly similar portion of the day.

Civil disobedience is distinct from First Amendment-protected speech. It involves both breaking an unjust law and accepting the consequences. There is a long and honorable history of civil disobedience in the United States, but true civil disobedience ultimately honors and respects the rule of law. In a 1965 appearance on “Meet the Press,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: “When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.”

But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness. No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others. Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin.

The result of lawlessness is chaos and injustice. Other students can’t speak. Other students can’t learn. Teachers and administrators can’t do their jobs.

In my experience as a litigator , campus chaos is frequently the result of a specific campus culture. Administrators and faculty members will often abandon any pretense of institutional neutrality and either cooperate with their most intense activist students or impose double standards that grant favored constituencies extraordinary privileges. For many administrators, the very idea of neutrality is repugnant. It represents a form of complicity in injustice that they simply can’t and won’t stomach. So they nurture and support one side. They scorn the opposition, adopting a de facto posture that says , “To my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

I’ve experienced this firsthand. I vividly remember representing a campus Christian group in a dispute at Tufts University in 2000 . The group had been derecognized for requiring that student leaders of their group share that group’s traditional sexual ethic, which reserves sex for heterosexual marriage. You might disagree strongly with that view, but granting religious groups the flexibility to impose faith-based requirements on religious leaders fits squarely within the American tradition of free exercise of religion.

Tufts is a private university, so it has some flexibility in suppressing religious expression on campus, but it had no excuse for attempting to toss a Christian group from campus at the same time that it permitted acts of intimidation against those Christian students. For example, at the most contentious moment of the dispute, Tufts officials prevented my student clients and me from entering the hearing room where their appeal was being heard, while a crowd of protesters gathered in a darkened hallway, pressed up around us and herded us into a corner of the hall. There was no campus outrage at this act of intimidation. We saw no administrative response.

University complicity in chaos isn’t unusual. In a case I worked on when I was president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, we discovered that administrators at Washington State University’s Pullman campus had actually helped plan a disruptive protest against a play put on by a student director, an intentionally provocative show that mocked virtually every group on campus.

University or faculty participation in unlawful protest isn’t confined to the cases I worked on. At Oberlin College, administrative facilitation of ugly and defamatory student protests outside a local business ultimately cost the school $36 million in damages. At Columbia, hundreds of sympathetic faculty members staged their own protest in support of the student encampment on the quad, and there are reports that other faculty members have attempted to block members of the media from access to the student encampment.

None of this is new. All of it creates a culture of impunity for the most radical students. Disruptive protesters are rarely disciplined, or they get mere slaps on the wrist. They’re hailed as heroes by many of their professors. Administrators look the other way as protesters pitch their tents on the quad — despite clear violations of university policy. Then, days later, the same administrators look at the tent city on campus, wring their hands, and ask, “How did this spiral out of control?”

There is a better way . When universities can actually recognize and enforce the distinctions among free speech, civil disobedience and lawlessness, they can protect both the right of students to protest and the rights of students to study and learn in peace.

In March a small band of pro-Palestinian students at Vanderbilt University in Nashville pushed past a security guard so aggressively that they injured him , walked into a university facility that was closed to protest and briefly occupied the building. The university had provided ample space for protest, and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students had been speaking and protesting peacefully on campus since Oct. 7.

But these students weren’t engaged in free speech. Nor were they engaged in true civil disobedience. Civil disobedience does not include assault, and within hours the university shut them down. Three students were arrested in the assault on the security guard, and one was arrested on charges of vandalism. More than 20 students were subjected to university discipline, three were expelled , and one was suspended.

The message was clear: Every student can protest, but protest has to be peaceful and lawful. In taking this action, Vanderbilt was empowered by its posture of institutional neutrality . It does not take sides in matters of public dispute. Its fundamental role is to maintain a forum for speech, not to set the terms of the debate and certainly not to permit one side to break reasonable rules that protect education and safety on campus.

Vanderbilt is not alone in its commitment to neutrality. The University of Chicago has long adhered to the Kalven principles , a statement of university neutrality articulated in 1967 by a committee led by one of the most respected legal scholars of the last century, Harry Kalven Jr. At their heart, the Kalven principles articulate the view that “the instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars.”

Contrast Vanderbilt’s precise response with the opposing extremes. In response to the chaos at Columbia, the school is finishing the semester with hybrid classes, pushing thousands of students online. The University of Southern California canceled its main stage commencement ceremony , claiming that the need for additional safety measures made the ceremony impractical. At both schools the inability to guarantee safety and order has diminished the educational experience of their students.

While U.S.C. and Columbia capitulate, other schools have taken an excessively draconian approach. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas posted on X, “Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.” On April 25 the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a forceful letter to the president of the University of Texas at Austin condemning the display of force on campus. “U.T. Austin,” it wrote, “at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott, appears to have pre-emptively banned peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters due solely to their views rather than for any actionable misconduct.”

At Emory University, footage emerged of police tackling a female professor who posed no obvious danger to the police or anyone else. Protests are almost always tense, and there is often no easy way to physically remove protesters from campus, but the video footage of the confrontation with the professor was shocking. It’s hard to conceive of a justification for the violent police response.

At this moment, one has the impression that university presidents at several universities are simply hanging on, hoping against hope that they can manage the crisis well enough to survive the school year and close the dorms and praying that passions cool over the summer.

That is a vain hope. There is no indication that the war in Gaza — or certainly the region — will be over by the fall. It’s quite possible that Israel will be engaged in full-scale war on its northern border against Hezbollah. And the United States will be in the midst of a presidential election that could be every bit as contentious as the 2020 contest.

But the summer does give space for a reboot. It allows universities to declare unequivocally that they will protect free speech, respect peaceful civil disobedience and uphold the rule of law by protecting the campus community from violence and chaos. Universities should not protect students from hurtful ideas, but they must protect their ability to peacefully live and learn in a community of scholars. There is no other viable alternative.

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David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation .” You can follow him on Threads ( @davidfrenchjag ).