The class of 2015 will graduate with the highest level of debt ever, continuing the student loan debt upward trend that has been occurring for years. Seventy percent of the graduating class will have debt, amounting to $35,051 per person on average, according to Marketwatch.com.
Xongsheng Xu, a Georgia State professor of economics, said the current college education system may leave some students with a significant amount of debt.
“Students cannot concentrate on their studies since they have to work while being full time students,” he said. “Policies on repayments of student loans may have incentives for students to get low paid jobs so that they can delay paying back the loans.”
Policymakers and presidential candidates have been devising plans to help students deal with their debt load.
Bernie Sanders, a Democratic senator from Vermont who is running for president, has already introduced a bill, titled the College For All Act, to make 4-year colleges free, according to GovTrack. It is currently being reviewed by a congressional committee and could be sent to the House or Senate for a vote.
Hillary Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, is also considering the issue and has created a similar plan for publicly financed college, which is detailed in her website.
Kandarp Shah, Georgia State student, said he thinks college is an opportunity only a few people can afford.
“If college was free and not seen as a responsibility [students] would have to pay for, they could still go to college,” he said.
However, Georgia State film student Kyle Shade said he doubts how effective free college would be.
“Free college? How would you pay for the teachers?” he said. “The effectiveness of the school would go down because [teachers] aren’t getting paid as much.”
Xu said a college education creates positive externalities for society, such as increased productivity and a more informed society. It can also alleviate inequalities in education, and these are reasons to either make college tuition-free or subsidized.
However, he said there are also negative aspects to publicly funding college.
“A free college education is not really free–a country or a society would have to find other ways to fund colleges,” he said.
He said the positive externalities created by a college education may not be high enough to justify public funding and an education is mainly a signaling device for employers that demonstrates a graduate’s productivity.
Still, publicly funded education policies can be found in many industrialized countries.
Alesandro Ramaldes, a Georgia State graduate computer science student, earned his undergraduate degree in his native country of Brazil, where education is completely free.
“Everything comes from the government. From pre-K to Phd is entirely funded,” Ramaldes said.
Ramaldes said students are given a free education if they maintain a decent grade point average and can earn any level of degree they wish under the government’s system. However, the focus of the two systems are different.
“We don’t score on GPA, because that is a way to narrow people,” he said. “People will become so concerned about the number, and not the quality.”
Instead, degree programs create their own measures of quality, such as whether a person publishes academic articles. Ramaldes said he prefers Brazil’s system to the U.S.’s, because his native country focuses on developing students’ skills and their work. He said he thinks the U.S. system is more focused on profiting from projects and doesn’t utilize funding to enhance students’ knowledge and experience.
“We have great universities. Some of the best universities are here. But that’s the problem. They are only good because they are pouring in money from something else, and it’s not focusing on the quality of the student. It’s about making profit,” he said. “We are pouring so much money into this that don’t matter.”
Politicians, such as Sanders and Clinton, who advocate for tuition-free college propose funding students through taxes on the wealthy and financial institutions. This is similar to how Brazil finances its education system.
“We tax the wealthy people,” Ramaldes said. “Those taxes plus royalties from the exploration of petroleum in the Atlantic.”
Ramaldes said taxes from gas production go to healthcare and education. The Brazilian government also provides all the means necessary for a student to attend college, even if they aren’t near the college they wish to attend.
“When I went to biology school, I didn’t have to pay,” he said. “The government funds transportation and housing so student can go to the university to get the degree that they want.”
