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Argumentative Essay: Should Community Colleges Be Free?

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Typically when something is labeled as free people tend to take advantage of it, however, it’s not always in a positive way. In this day and age it has gotten increasingly difficult to obtain any type of job, especially without a degree of any sort. Which is why there has been more of a push for people to continue school and go to college, thus the debate of whether or not college should be free in an effort to make it approachable for all students. I believe community colleges shouldn’t be free due to the fact that people who are in financial need receive enough support, it’ll draw students to schools with low graduation rates, and the colleges will become overcrowded. The reasoning behind making community colleges free is so that lower class students could afford to further their education, coincidentally this is the same reason why there are so many financial aid opportunities for them. There are hundreds of scholarships that students can apply for, various loans they can take out, and several versions of federal financial aid they can obtain. A community college tuition averages around $3,347 which is “more than covered by the $5,730 that low-income students can receive . . . [from] a Pell grant” (Jacobs). …show more content…

As it turns out, the expected outcome of this plan is that “the neediest students [will] enroll at the lowest-funded colleges with the lowest graduation rates . . . [and generally] 40 percent of community college students earn a degree within 6 years” (Jacobs). Thus demonstrating how the proposition could cause students to not only waste money they spent on books and supplies, but also the time they could’ve spent at a seemingly better institution, or in the workforce collecting the profits they so desperately

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