Education is widely regarded as a key factor in the economic and social development of a country, but there are different attitudes about whether students should pay or not. Some regard education as a basic right, which should therefore be provided free, while others think the individual student should have to shoulder some of the costs of his or her education. This essay will examine some of the arguments for and against free education at third level.
There are several reasons why university education in particular should be paid for by the students who receive it. First of all, a university is a choice, not a requirement. Nobody is forced to attend third level, and those who do are hoping to enter very well paid jobs. Students entering professions such as engineering or medicine will be well able to repay loans or the cost of tuition. A second point is that if students from rich families are receiving free university education from the state, they are increasing the load on the university and ministry of education and reducing the resources available for poorer students. Furthermore, when people pay for something, they often value it more. Students who get free education may enroll purely because they don’t want to work or because they can’t think of anything better to do, and this can lead to poor motivation and poor study habits.
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.
In conclusion, to allow as many people as possible to develop to their full potential and to develop the country, we need to make third level education available to all. Restricting access to the elite will have detrimental effects on the society and the economy.