Healthcare and Education Should Be Free

I do not believe about 4 year university and never said you did, so that is a misunderstanding. It is the same even if you get the two year fee. Even if you get it, still you have to pay. Then why don't we just pay in the first place? Why I won this debate I made good a strong arguments. However my opponent's were slightly weaker than mine. I made strong rebuttals and answered all of the opponents rebuttal, when the opponent did not answer. My opponent made some misunderstandings of what I said. I will restate my arguments again. 1. The cost to the state is far too great to sustain universal free university education The social-democratic model, most prevalent in Europe, is a failure. The system of paying for universal healthcare, education, pensions, etc. threatens to bankrupt the countries maintaining them; it is simply unsustainable. The cost of paying for free university education is ruinously high. The government money needed to be channeled into universities to provide for free education, as well as into various other generous social welfare benefits, has been a case of borrowing from future generations to finance current consumption1]. For these countries to survive, and lest other countries attempt to follow suit with similar models, they must rethink what they can afford to provide freely to citizens. In the case of education, it seems fair to say that all states should offer access to their citizens to primary and secondary education opportunities, since the skills acquired during such education are absolutely necessary for citizens to function effectively within society; reading, writing, basic civics, etc. are essential knowledge which the state is well-served in providing. University, on the other hand, is not essential to life in the same way. People can be functional and responsible citizens without it; it can be nice to attend, but one can live effectively without it. For this reason, the state must consider university in the same way it does any non-essential service; people may pay for it if they wish to partake, but they cannot view it as an entitlement owed by the state that will simply provide it to everyone. The cost is just too high, and the state must act from a utilitarian perspective in this case. Instituting fees will place the cost of education upon those wishing to reap the benefits of education, and not on the taxpayer.2. The quality of education suffers when university education is free Without university fees, universities become dependent on the state for funding. The problem with this is that the state’s aim is to increase university attendance levels for the sake of political gain, while at the same time striving not to increase spending on the universities. The result is an increase in attendance, without commensurate increase in funding from the state. This leads to larger class-sizes and less spending per student[1]. Furthermore, these problems result in disconnected lecturers who, due to increased class sizes, cannot connect to their students or offer more than cursory assistance to struggling pupils. The decline in teaching quality is further exacerbated by their need to focus less on teaching and more on research, which is more profitable and thus encouraged by cash-strapped universities. With fees, on the other hand, the quality of universities increases for three reasons. First, funding improves, as university may charge in accordance with need rather than with making do with whatever the state gives them to fund teaching. The result is a consistent quality in education resources rather than it being dependent upon what the state happens to give universities, and on how many students it pushes to be accepted. Second, quality of teaching is improved. Because a university wants people to attend and to pay fees, the programs and degrees they offer have to be good signals of quality. Universities thus stay in business only so long as they remain purveyors of high quality educational goods. They must thus let in smart people, irrespective of their financial background, which will in part serve to admit and finance capable people from disadvantaged backgrounds through targeted financial aid programs. Third, the average quality of students attending university will improve. This is because students feel they need to get the most from their investment in education, which can be quite substantial. They will thus be more attentive and more interested in doing well. An example of higher quality education stemming from fee-paying higher education systems is that of the United States, which has twenty of the top fifty ranked universities in the world[2]. Quality is clearly improved when university is not free.