Tuition Free High Education in US

I would like to begin by thanking my opponent for this opportunity to debate an issue that I feel strongly about; it has been a good one, so far as I am concerned. I look forward to any opportunity to debate my opponent in the future. My opponent claims that education is a right; he uses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 as proof of this. However, this document is not of the United States, it is of the United Nations. This brings up an interesting side debate (that I hope my opponent will indulge me in when this debate is concluded) or whether or not we, as a sovereign nation, ought to subjugate our decision-making to a supranational body. By enacting legislature and policies that affect American citizens at the behest of such a supranational body (i. e. the UN, NATO, WTO, etc) we de facto enter into a submissive arrangement with said body. This is completely unacceptable. Our forefathers have not fought and died to grant us our national sovereignty only to have us throw it away, granting our decision-making to an international, conglomerate, international body made up of members that our citizens did not elect. We hardly have a choice on who our UN ambassador is (sure, the Senate must approve of the nominee, but it does not go to general election); we certainly have no control over the delegates from other states. Allowing UN policy and decree to dictate our national decision making is tantamount to allowing foreign governments to have a hand in our own. Again, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. My opponent then goes on to say that, "This debate is about free tuition not about quality of education: if student is qualification [sic] he\she must get free education (no slavery via loans) in any US higher education institution. " There are several problems with this statement. The first is his claim that quality of education is irrelevant. This is absurd; quality of education is of tantamount importance. We must use quality of education as a criterion with which to measure our resolution; there is no point to having "free" higher education if such education is so poor as to be actually a detriment to students (for example). The next is that my opponent claims that loans equate to slavery. This is also absurd. I'm sure that, at 44, my opponent has in his lifetime purchased a car or a home (or both). Unless my opponent had thousands of dollars sitting around, he must have taken out a loan at some time or another. And what about credit cards? Has my opponent never used one of those either? The fact of the matter is, loans are entered into voluntarily; you agree to the terms thereof, and both you and the financial institute you borrow from are subject to obey the terms of the agreement. You pay the financial institution for the privilege of being fronted the money to make a large purchase that you would not have been able to otherwise. This is not slavery, which is the involuntary, usually permanent, ownership of another human being complete with the right to dispose of said person as one wishes, a completely horrible practice. The two do not equate. Ask anyone who has been a slave. The fact that my opponent would suggest that the opportunity to buy a home or go to college by borrowing the needed money is the same as slavery is offensive to the extreme. The third problem is that my opponent claims that students must be granted admission to, "any US higher education institution. " What if I start Robert Fischer University, and I decide that I don't want to accept any government money for tuition. The wording my opponent uses seems to suggest that I would be forced to. The words, "any," and, "none," are strong words. If prospective students have a 'right' to be granted 'free' admission to 'any' institution, Harvard would be swamped overnight, and the intrinsic value that it has (as a respected institution) built up over the years would be almost vanished overnight. To address my opponents final point, that only $50 billion would need to be spent annually: $50 billion is a lot of money. We seem to forget this, what with ridiculous spending daily and huge bailout being proposed monthly (it seems). But $50 billion is a lot of money, many times more than I, my children, and my grandchildren will probably ever earn in all of our lifetimes put together. This sum of money, while paling in comparison to some of the other outlandish figures our government proposes to spend, is still large. Especially at a time when our deficit is huge and billions of dollars of our money is spent annually on interest payments on past and current debts our government has incurred alone, any additional spending that is not ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY is ludicrous; this applies as readily to pork barrel spending as it does to the program in question, corporate welfare, and bailouts. All political and philosophical objections aside, at this point in time, our government needs to buckle down and live within its means. We have spent too much money that we did not have for too long. It is time that our government pays down it's debt and ceases any non-critical spending (at least for the time being). If we don't, our nation may collapse under the weight of this insane fiscal policy's debt. While I would still argue that the government has no place in education at all, at least not in the respect that my opponent advocates, for philosophical and political reasons, the fact remains that, at this point in time, even an advocate of such programs must use common sense and realize that this is not the time for this type of program. To close out this debate, I would like to say the following. In order to uphold the resolution, my opponent would have had to demonstrate that subsidizing higher education for all students in the United States that meet minimum standards would result in a net benefit to all citizens of the United States. At no time has he put forth what standards would be used to evaluate whether or not a student would receive the subsidy (what about a wealthy student who can afford it on his or her own? Would this person receive the money, and if no, why don't they have as much a right to it as anybody else? ). At no time has he demonstrated a convincing net benefit. His argumentation has been fractured, incomplete, and at times absurd. I have refuted many of the supposed benefits, and shown many downfalls, all of which casting into doubt his claim that such a plan would be beneficial. Furthermore, I have demonstrated that subsidizing higher education would not only be ridiculously expensive, inefficient, and bureaucratic (thanks to the nature of the US Federal Government), it would also be an inappropriate action for the Government to take when weighed against our own Constitution (which must, and does, take precedent over any UN resolution).