Free Health Care? or Free College?

Posted on August 17, 2009
Filed Under Politics, Words, words, words | By Ashley Singh

I read this article on Yahoo about how states are now beginning to cut aid to college students. This is happening because of the recession. More people are asking for financial because more parents are losing their jobs, among other circumstances. States are struggling to balance budgets and are beginning to slash programs left and right.

As most of you know, financial aid is usually need-based and is more often than not based on your family’s income. I lost out on the TAG grant because my dad makes what they call “too much money” for me to get it and last year I got the least amount I could get from it. I recently figured out that I will graduate college with approximately $30,000 in student debt, and with the economy the way it is, I’m just hoping and praying that I get a job to pay them off. Did I mention I want to go to grad school?

As I said before, financial aid is usually awarded based on student need. Someone always has it worse off than you do, and that’s why aid is being denied to so many. More students are applying for aid and there’s just not enough to go around. The article says that “roughly 620,000 more students applied for federal aid in the first quarter compared with last year, a jump of more than 25 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.”

What I don’t understand is how state legislators and congressmen can preach about how important it is to strengthen the youth of America through education and then turn around and pull this. What is that? Saracasm? Even President Obama has spoken out on the subject, saying “We need to put a college education within reach of every American. That’s the best investment we can make in our future. I’ll create a new and fully refundable tax credit worth $4,000 for tuition and fees every year, which will cover two-thirds of the tuition at the average public college or university. I’ll also simplify the financial aid application process so that we don’t have a million students who aren’t applying for aid because it’s too difficult. I will start by eliminating the current student aid form altogether—we’ll use tax data instead.”

Here’s a thought: instead of making health care free for all Americans, let’s make college free for all Americans. Take a second and let that marinate. Just think of how revolutionary that would be. This whole financial aid crisis students are currently facing would be nonexistent. Students wouldn’t be transferring colleges or dropping out altogether because they couldn’t afford it. They wouldn’t have to opt for community colleges instead of their dream university because they couldn’t afford it. I say that if you are a legal citizen of the United States, you should be able to go to college for free. Students across the country wouldn’t be tens of thousands of dollars in debt the second they graduate and they would have that degree they have been working so hard towards for four years for that dream job that would help them pay for their expensive health care.

P.S. If you’re curious about Obama’s education plan, check it out here.

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Comments

One Response to “Free Health Care? or Free College?”

  1. Jess on August 19th, 2009 11:36 am

    Can’t we have both?

    I’m an “independent” college student. I got laid off from my job a couple of years ago and decided to go back to school. And because financial aid is based off your prior year’s tax *returns*, which is based off your prior year’s income, they decided that I made too much. (Even though I’m only working part-time now.) So yeah, I’m racking up the student loan debt too.

    Plus, I have to pay out-of-pocket for health insurance as well, since I lost that when I lost my previous employment.

    I think that if the government is helping to put people through school, shouldn’t they want to protect that investment, by making sure that their students are healthy and taken care of?

    No… instead they’re paying billions of dollars to fight two senseless wars halfway around the world.

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