Free College Tuition Doesn’t Solve Higher Learning Crisis: What Are We Paying For?

The first time I heard Bernie Sanders utter the words “free college,” I almost cried of relief.

The exaggeration is minimal: The idea of public colleges and universities being tuition-free is enough to provoke a sense of freedom that entitles you to believe all things are possible. Herein lies the question, I realized, the more I read and clung to the words that would make finishing my degree a worthy investment: To what are we entitled?

I have always felt that every student in this world is entitled to learn, which, for some, means pursuing the hallowed halls of higher education with vigor. For others, it means alternative routes: Internships, jobs, trade schools, community colleges. As we approach the question of whether higher education should be free (I am, perhaps, hopeful in assuming it is agreed upon that tuition must be more affordable), it is necessary to define what education is, what it means, and subsequently, what we and our leaders are going to do to assist those whose higher education may take a path less traditional than textbooks and collegiate sweatshirts.

I dropped out of college once. It should be noted that I was a high-achieving high school student, and during the duration of my college career, I was a Dean’s List student. Humorously enough, before the stress of applications and standardized test scores sunk in, I actually ASPIRED to go to college. I did not drop out because I could not handle the workload, nor because I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. In short, I dropped out because I was terrified an education would actually leave me further behind, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in a lagging economy with no guarantee my degree would cinch me a job upon disrobing from my gap and gown.

Thus, one gap year turned into two, as I worked my way up through internships and personal ventures before managing to land a “real” full-time job. Armed with the thing I was truly worried would slip out of my grasp — after all, in 2014, an anxiety-inducing 8.5% of college grads between ages twenty-one and twenty-four were unemployed — I returned to school just last year, working on my degree one credit hour at a time as I try to sustain a career.

By marketing college, socially and politically, as an end-all, be-all experience of youth, are we doing a disservice to the same youth who are struggling to turn their degrees into dollars post-graduation? College has always been a young adult staple, a period for trial, error, and adventure, reminisced on with fondness and nostalgia, and one cannot imagine that changing in American society. Indeed, college students should be encouraged to go to college if that’s what they believe is best for their future. We should certainly be encouraged to try more, perhaps with opportunities for internships or work experience popping up prior to summer-before-senior-year panic, but we cannot neglect to acknowledge that one of the most important chapters of the college experience is the one that comes after. This requires us paying attention to both alternative higher learning environments, and doing everything we can to ensure students have the experience necessary to bridge the gap between graduate and young professional. The work does not stop when college becomes affordable: If anything, that should be a given. If education should be a right, it should also be an opportunity.

There is a difference between getting a diploma and getting a job, and one could argue, a substantial difference between getting a job and having a career, as evidenced by the 16.8% of college graduates that were underemployed in 2014. The question is not just how to make college affordable, but whether the cost of that education outweighs your future with it: A sobering question, but a crucial one.

The debt of college does not just come in the form of student loans. It also emerges in the form of what college is preparing you to do to help pay off those loans, and hopefully, embark on a life in which your education did not drown you.

Hilary Clinton’s website brandishes the line: “We need to make a quality education affordable and available to everyone willing to work for it, without saddling them with decades of debt.” The College for All Act is the brainchild of Bernie Sanders, with a goal of making getting a college education less burdensome to lower-income students.

Despite the best intentions, the question remains: Will these sought-after college educations prepare students for careers? Are colleges responsible for preparing a student to tackle the “real world”?

“Yes” is the only resolute answer. Education is not supposed to be a block of time that screeches to a halt when your four years culminate in a graduation line. Education and learning are continuous processes, evolving at a rapid rate to keep up with our world. Unless colleges and universities are teaching students to do the same, free college tuition is placing a bandaid on a gaping wound of supporting oneself in the post-collegiate world.

During my freshman year of college, I had an older professor who was flummoxed by the concept of the “meal card,” where you swipe your student I.D. to pay for your meal — often with little thought to how much money is in the account, or, in some cases, how it got there. “How do you learn to pay for your meal?” he would ask, astounded.

That’s the question: How do we learn to pay for our meals? Do tuition-free universities advance our goal of creating employment opportunities for graduates? Will it help make us the thoughtful, open-minded thinkers college is historically acclaimed for producing?

In the hype of free college, I have to ask: Where is the assistance for our trade school students? Or community college grads? Or those who need to gain hands-on experience in a field that may require financial help, but no classroom? Are we choosing to limit the kinds of learning upon which we place value?

“Free college” does not necessarily equate free learning. To ensure the futures of learners are successful — not just affordable — we must begin including all who learn differently in the higher education conversation.

We are taking incredible steps toward a country where higher education is hopeful, possible, and affordable. Now, it is time to ask what we are paying for.