STORY BY MITCH FELTZ
Free college for you, free college for you and free college for you! Sounds like a lifesaver, but last I checked we live in America, not on the Oprah Winfrey show.
President Obama’s expensive $60 billion program will allow any aspiring student to attend two years of community college for nothing if they maintain a 2.5 grade point average.
It sounds groundbreaking when announced in front of a throng of congressmen who clap like hostages held at gunpoint during the State of the Union address.
Truth be told Mr. President, there are flaws in your revolutionary plan.
Instead of making four-year colleges affordable, you have decided to make an already affordable two years of community college cost nothing.
Anyone above the poverty line can afford community college and those below it will receive financial aid regardless.
So why make the states responsible for $15 billion of this useless plan that does nothing but raise incentive for people who have decided to not attend college?
A major reason certain individuals opt out of college in the first place is due to the outrageous cost of four year institutions.
Most students right out of high school dread the thought of going to community college because they are still living with their parents.
To no one’s surprise, a lot of them despise it and either drop out or take out a backbreaking amount of student loans to let them attend their dream university.
Under this plan, state universities may receive less funding than they already have in order to support Obama’s senseless vision. This would increase the normal spike in the tuition, which is rising every year in nearly all colleges in America.
If Obama’s plan were to attract a massive surplus of potential students, what would happen to the value of a community college degree? It would likely be worth a lot less if almost everyone who graduated high school attained a degree, which after all is the whole reason the president implemented the idea in the first place. Employers would start throwing out the applications of community college grads (some of them already do so now) and look to hire applicants that attended a university full-time.
Rather than raising the motivation to pursue a community college degree, Obama should focus on lowering tuition costs on four-year universities.
Anyone, if they desire, can manage paying for community college. They end up leaving with a degree that lacks the debt that people take with them to their grave after graduating a four-year university.
The president has noble intentions with this plan, but it sounds like more of a gimmick when reflecting on what this proposal would potentially accomplish.
If the president wants the American people educated and employed, than maybe he should focus on university bound students with a family that makes under $200,000 a year. Families like this struggle to meet ends with the cost of tuition, thus causing them to suffocate in student loan debt. If the president addresses the real issues of tuition cost, then maybe we can stop wondering why people with a bachelors degrees end up living in their parent’s basement.
