However, there are sound economic and social reasons for making third level education free to all. In the first place, a modern country needs highly skilled graduates of all kinds, rather than just high school leavers. For many families, the high cost of tuition would discourage participation in third level education. An important point is that the contribution of fees to the budget of any good university or college is relatively small, since almost all colleges rely on large amounts of government or philanthropic funding. The money from fees may represent only a small part of the college budget. A third point is that third level education is not purely vocational. Students at college are not just being given technical skills desired by employers, but are questioning, analyzing, synthesizing and creating new knowledge, and this will be a tremendous resource to the society as a whole.