By Javier Lopez
The benefits of making four-year public universities and colleges tuition free could increase the amount of students who attend/ graduate college.
The College for All Act could make college free. The Act is meant to eliminate undergraduate tuition; making higher education free for students.
Educating the youth would help increase the success rate of low income students and encourage others to pursue a higher education.
The Act would bring the middle class back to life by creating the resources needed by students in order to get well paying jobs according to the College for All Act. This would benefit the economy by increasing the circulation of wealth. Which means, the more money people have, the more they will spend.
The amount of accessibility that comes with the College for All Act could encourage low income students to attend college by cutting off most barriers that stopped them before.
These barriers include being discouraged by the cost of attending a four-year university and being uncertain of the aid that is available to them. Another barrier that students face is having to continuously reapply for financial aid and being constantly questioned in order to ensure how deserving they are of the Federal government’s help.
The College for All Act would start a pilot program to eliminate having to reapply for financial aid each year as written in the Act. This would make life easier for low income students by removing another barrier.
Low income students also face the barrier of having to take out student loans to pay for college. Most students end up with an average debt of twenty eight thousand dollars by the time they graduate from college and it is approaching thirty thousand, according to usnews.com. The number varies depending on universities.
The College for All Act would help students with loans. The bill would lower student interest rates from 4.32 percent to 2.32 percent and also assure that the rates never surpass 8.25 percent on any loan, according to the Act.
This means that students with loans would pay less than they are being forced to pay now just for an education.
One more benefit the Act would bring is the enhancement of the Federal study program which provides jobs for students. The budget would be used to increase the number of jobs available to students. It would help out those who are in need to get a job, such as low income students.
This might seem impossible but Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for President and is the founder of the College for All Act, has a plan. The Federal government would be in charge of paying for sixty-seven percent of the cost of running a college or university, while the state pays for the other thirty-three percent.
This would cover the seventy billion dollars that public colleges need in order to operate.
The money to pay for all of this would be collected by imposing a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street. The College for All Act would charge a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades (fifty cents for every one hundred dollars worth of stock). It would charge a 0.1 percent tax on bonds as well as impose other taxes on Wall Street, as written in the Act.
These taxes could build up a revenue of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This is where the money to make public four-year universities and colleges free would come from.
Students at East Los Angeles Community College would benefit from the College for all Act. ELAC has students from low income communities and the Act would remove barriers ELAC students face.
It would be beneficial for any student planning to transfer, but has no money to attend a four-year college. It would help students who are looking for a part-time job while they attend school or for students who have student loans.
This act is essential to the growth of the United States. In order for the College for all Act to be passed, Bernie Sanders must be elected president of the United States. The benefits of the act speak for themselves.
It would increase the amount of college graduates that come from low income communities. It would benefit the economy. The College for all Act would also increase the number of opportunities available for students and professors.
It is time to stop treating students like sources of income for banks and treat them as the future of this country by providing them with a free education.