Student debt is a major point of issue in the United States. In the 2020 election, President Biden campaigned with the idea of reducing student debt and making public colleges and universities free for families with incomes less than $125,000 annually. According to educationdata.org, the current debt amount is over $1.56 trillion.
“Student loans are a huge problem in the US, I think it’s the most stressful source for young people,” Marissa Galant, a junior at Ohio University studying international business and business economics, said in a message.
While Galant agrees that this is an issue and thinks changes can be made, she understands that it may not be realistic to accomplish the goal of canceling student debt and making college free for lower-income families.
However, Judith Grant, an OU political science professor, disagrees. She believes Biden’s plan is feasible.
“I think that closing tax loopholes for the super-rich and corporate America, as well as a wealth tax, would make this very easy to do,” Grant said in a message.
Grant said it has been widely reported that during the pandemic billionaires’ wealth increased by $3.9 trillion worldwide. Grant believes this shows that wealth exists, and that making universities free would be not only easy, but beneficial.
“Education should be free for everyone. I think we should instead ask why would you not want people to be educated? The societal benefits of having an educated electorate alone would be worth it,” Grant said in an email.
Many other countries worldwide offer free university-level education to the public. Two of these countries are Germany and Argentina. Julia Veitinger, a current student at FOM Applied Sciences University, previously attended a free public university in Germany. She explains that she only had to pay a semesterly cost of about 120 euros for her bus ticket to the university.
Veitinger agrees with Grant’s statement that education should be free for everyone. She believes it should be a person’s choice if they go to university or not and that expensive education can split a society.
“If you come from a poor family and you want to become a lawyer… a scientist or a doctor, you can still follow your dream. So it doesn’t mean that if you’re born into a poor family, that you stay poor,” Veitinger said in a message.
Veitinger and Grant have an overall positive view of free university, but not everyone feels the same. Santiago Torrado, a political science student at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina thinks free universities can take a toll on the country if they are ill-administered. He does think free university is important but that it can also have negative impacts.
“I think some universities should be completely free but they should be well managed and administered, which is not the case in my country,” Torrado said in a message.
If students in the US are going to see free university options, the government may want to look at how other countries are successfully providing free university. They could take the pros and cons from each to create a positive system in the US, but Grant knows may not be as simple as that.
“Certainly it is always worth looking at the other systems that work, but the tax structure and university systems in the US are very different from the ones in Europe,” Grant said in an email.
Right now it is not exactly clear what a new system would be modeled after or if Biden’s plan will succeed, but many people think it would be beneficial.
The next four years of President Biden’s term may reveal a successful plan that will help young adults across the nation, but for now the student debt crisis only escalates as debts reach into the trillions of dollars.
