By Diego Rodriguez
If elected president, Bernie Sanders will fight to ensure that every American in school is able to attend a college or university regardless of how much money their parents make and without going deeply into debt. His idea “It’s time to make College tuition free and Debt free” brings joy and high aspirations to any college student or future college student.
One of his goals is to make tuition free at public colleges and universities, it’s not a crazy idea that came out of left field. For example, many countries like Finland, Norway, Sweden and many others have already applied this idea to their schooling system. It’s proven that more students are not discouraged to go to college because of the price or debt. If we other countries have done it and seen improvement, why can’t the United States of America? The U.S. actually did offer free college, until the 1980s the University of California system offered free tuition at its schools. In 1965, the average tuition for a four-year public university in the U.S. was $243.
Many of the top Universities including City University of New York did not charge any tuition. In today’s world, that’s how much college students pay for one book. It is shocking to learn about how cheap or free college was, knowing the cost of college now. Some student are not able to attend college because of the income of their family. Students are discouraged by the cost of college and what their debt will be in the future.
Every student’s nightmare is student loans, nearly every student in college either has it or is about to get it. What makes it worse is the interest rate. It crazy how you can get a car loan with an interest rate of about 2.5%, but basically every college graduate is forced to pay a interest rate ranging from 5-7%. Under the Sanders plan, Americans would be able to refinance their student loans at today’s low interest rates.
Bernie Sanders’ plan offers free tuition to every student that qualifies, other candidates specifically Hillary Clinton does not. The Sanders plan believes and offers the opportunity for students who work hard to go to college. Whether we know if every student in America works hard or not is solely on the student. The Clinton plan makes middle class students pay tuition on a formula based on family income. The Clinton plan also states that every student must work 10 hours a week for receiving aid. A lot of students now work more than that, whether it is full or part time.
Students may see no problem in that, but the Sanders plan does. It believes that each student should only focus on school and nothing else. Let’s be realistic, even though you will receive financial aid from the Clinton plan or Sanders plan, it may not be enough to support you and your family. That’s why we work, so we could have extra spending money to get the new shoes or video game that came out.
The Clinton plan is more of a “work for your education” type of idea and may seem more realistic plan that Sanders’ plan. The only problem in the Clinton plan is that there is no sense of where the money will come from to aid the plan and diminish student debt. The Sanders plan aims at a tax on Wall Street speculators that will finance the whole thing. The more realistic idea may be the Clinton plan, but the Sanders plan helps us students get out of debt and attend college without worrying about what we have to pay in the future.