by Ginger Semko
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I found the most meaningful part of this essay to be the fact that the entire process and experience of writing it was completely different from every other essay I’ve done before. In previous work, I typically relied on my existing knowledge and opinions to come up with ideas before I began writing. With this essay, my final conclusion emerged solely out of, and because of, the research I did, and I had no clue where I was going to end up when I first started to work on it.
When selecting the controversy, I was initially concerned that I wouldn’t be able to push my thinking regarding the value of college past the concept of the American Dream. I was aware that there had already been an extensive conversation and general consensus within academia that colleges do enable the American Dream. I also knew that because of this existing consensus, choosing to make the American Dream the final landing point of my essay would be the easy thing to do. However, this wouldn’t fulfill the point of the assignment, which was to reframe the controversy we selected in an entirely new light. Thus, I pushed myself to dig deeper, knowing that American Dream in and of itself wasn’t the end, but also simultaneously having no idea what that end was supposed to be.
After sorting through countless articles online, I finally stumbled upon the piece by Matthew Desmond in which he traced the roots of America’s modern capitalism back to slavery. This article drove me to realize that American capitalism was designed from the very beginning to benefit certain groups of people—specifically those who are white and male. Tying this idea into the previous research I had done, I was able to eventually see American systems of higher education, and the college tuition controversy, as the natural result of both the American Dream and our overarching racist, capitalistic system.
—Ginger Semko
I still remember the very first college admissions decision I received. I was at a dance practice for my friend Ara’s cotillion, and as usual, somehow we all ended up on our phones instead of actually practicing. A quick refresh of my email revealed a new message: “There has been an update to your application portal.” I logged into my portal to be greeted with a blast of virtual confetti and the words, “Congratulations! You have been offered early acceptance to San Diego State University!” Overwhelmed with excitement, I, along with some friends who had also just received the same news, began to leap up and down proclaiming, “We’re going to college!” At that moment, we didn’t care about anything else. It didn’t matter to us if we got rejected at every other school because we were going to college—we had gotten in somewhere. And after months of convincing ourselves that we weren’t “good enough,” this was a glimmer of hope that, maybe, we were.
For high school seniors, March is a whirlwind of highs and lows, of acceptances and rejections. However, the stakes rise even higher in April. April is the season of decision making, in which students are forced to consider not only what college they want to attend, but also how much they are willing to spend. As I started to do more in-depth research on my top choices, and with the excitement that had come with the initial notification of admission long gone, it became hard to determine exactly how much money I could ask my parents to spend on my education. I half wished I didn’t make it into some of the schools I was considering so I wouldn’t have to make the decision myself.
In the past twenty years alone, the total cost of college tuition has risen by 154% for private universities, and by 221% for public universities (Boyington and Kerr). This has caused a major acceleration in the number of students who rely on loans to finance their educational experience. According to the US Department of Education, 45 million borrowers in the United States collectively owe over 1.5 trillion dollars in student loan debt, making it the second highest category of consumer debt in the US after mortgage debt (Friedman). The student debt crisis also shows no signs of slowing down in the future. As Daniel M. Johnson, Professor of Public Policy and Economic Development at the University of Toledo, warns in the Harvard Business Review, “economists project an accumulated student loan debt of $2 trillion by 2021,” and “$3 trillion or more by the end of the next decade.” As conversations about student debt and the rising costs of college have started to enter mainstream media, politicians and the public alike have begun to ask: should tuition at all public colleges be free?
The main goal of making college tuition free is to offer all students, regardless of socioeconomic background and financial situation, easier access to higher education. Many high profile Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have already promoted the idea of free public college on their platforms, with Sanders also calling for the forgiveness of all existing student loans. On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez argues that “public goods” like public schools, libraries, and fire departments are designed to serve all citizens, regardless of income. She further explains, “Universal systems that benefit everyone are stronger bc everyone’s invested!” (@AOC). Sociologist Tressie McMillan shares a similar sentiment, stating that even though free college will not completely eliminate structural and socioeconomic inequality, it should still be implemented regardless, as it “reintroduces the concept of public good to higher education discourse—a concept that fifty years of individuation, efficiency fetishes, and a rightward drift in politics have nearly pummeled out of higher education altogether” (McMillan Cottom). The long-term hope is that the free college debate will help break what McMillan Cottom calls the “language of competition” in America, and further open up the conversation about supporting the collective good in other ways, such as “Medicare for all, a jobs guarantee, basic income and free child and elder care” (Kim). Two colleges in Kentucky have also shown that free college is more than just a concept—it’s something that can actually work in the real world. NPR reporter Jeff Tyler writes that Berea College has kept itself tuition-free since 1892 by building up a $1.2 billion-dollar endowment fund which covers costs for 1,600 students, all of whom are from low income families. Alice Lloyd College has a much smaller endowment, at $44 million, but uses an “unconventional budgeting method.” While most colleges use tuition to cover institution costs and debt, Alice Lloyd secures investors to fully fund construction before breaking ground. Both colleges utilize a work-study program, with students required to work at least ten hours a week (Tyler).