Imagine a world in which you have the freedom to pursue higher education of almost any kind. All you have to focus on is school- no part-time job and no crippling stress about paying off $250,000 of student loan debt for the next thirty years. You finally have the right to do what you want, to pursue any career you want, and to earn a job through hard work.

 

This is the problem. Currently, a job candidate’s employability is impacted by their education–candidates who have college degrees are more employable, according to a recently published Washington Post article.

 

In the article, the Washington Post analyzes government job reports and categorizes the types of people who are having the most difficulty re-entering the workforce post-pandemic. What they explain is unsurprising: those who don’t have college degrees are struggling the most. The report showed that while 199,000 adult workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher have not “found work again after losing their jobs in the pandemic,” almost four million adults without a bachelor’s degree are unemployed.

 

Unfortunately, the Washington Post’s findings are not unique. Less-educated Americans consistently tend to be hurt the most during disasters and left behind during prosperous times, taking away their freedom to enjoy the riches of capitalism–the foundation of the American economy. Not allowing all Americans the opportunity to enjoy the riches of capitalism is a failure of our country.
So, how can we fix the current unemployment problem so more Americans can reap the benefits of capitalism? The simple and most effective solution is to educate more Americans so that more people have college degrees. Solving this problem will result in a stronger economy because “unemployment adversely affects the disposable income of families, erodes purchasing power…and reduces an economy’s output”.

 

My physical therapist has over $250,000 in student loan debt. Logically speaking, why would anyone want to continue their education beyond high school if the reward is a quarter million dollars of debt hanging over their head for ten to twenty years? Very few people would sign up for this suffocating debt, which means there is one viable solution: we must provide free college tuition to all Americans.

 

However, eliminating tuition at universities would be somewhat expensive; it would be at least $79 billion per year, according to the New York Times. While that is a lot of money, it “could be more affordable than you think.”

 

Let’s look at some actual educational expenses the government pays.

 

In 2016, the federal government spent $91 billion on “policies that subsidized college attendance,” which is substantially more than the $79 billion needed to eliminate tuition at public universities. Another $37 billion of  federal money went toward tuition tax credits and other tax benefits, which predominantly aided wealthier families–families more likely to send their children to college without needing government assistance. Using only some of that money– shifting funds–could help cover a substantial portion of the cost needed to eliminate college tuition.
Furthermore, according to the CollegePost, community college tuition is already free or subsidized in 19 states, so we already have several blueprints to make free college education throughout the United States a reality for all Americans. The Biden Administration has proposed what Anthony Carnavale, director of the Georgetown center on Education and Workforce, calls a “pragmatic approach by proposing both two years of free pre-school and two additional years of free community college.” Carnavale, a President George W. Bush appointee, notes, “it’s a sweet spot because [Biden] wasn’t going to get free [four year] college”. Carnavale goes on to reference data from Brookings, which shows the positive body of evidence showing the long-term economic benefits of the Head Start program, which includes a federal preschool program.

 

Carnavale explains the benefits of investing in educating Americans, saying “two years of community college brings a return. In general, we see an 8% increase per annum for every year of college you complete.” People who attend college will make, on average, two times as much as their non-college-educated counterparts. Therefore, free college to all Americans is more than worthwhile. A more educated country will allow a greater number of people to be employed and to earn more money. This is important because having a country where most people are, by current standards, high earners will allow more people to buy goods, boosting the economy. In conjunction with higher tax revenue from increased amounts of people earning more money, this will provide the federal and state governments substantial amounts of additional income. Additionally, government spending on social programs, such as support for people in poverty, will decrease, as less educated people are more likely to live in poverty than people who have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, on average.
Does it still sound crazy to provide free education to all Americans? Maybe yes at first blush, but not only do we have 19 states in the U.S. already providing some form of free college education, but similar systems are in place in several rich nations around the world, such as Germany, so free college education is not that radical of a notion. More importantly, the benefits are too great to ignore. America, it is time to act, to bring ourselves into the 21st Century, and put us on the fast track to becoming the best capitalist democracy in the world.