Free University Education

Sorry for the delay - I have been very busy recently..Right, so I will argue that we should not have free university education. I will now present multiple reasons for this.1. University is not a rightThe right to education is widely accepted and is upheld by the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1). Yet this right is only for education that is considered essential to be a productive citizen and to allow one to engage in the pursuit of happiness.University, in contrast, is a non-essential addition to core education. It is designed to educate the brightest in our society to do the most challenging jobs such as doctors, lawyers or architects. It is by no means designed, nor is it suitable, to be a form of education that should be provided to everyone as a right.So why should the government provide free university tuition if people don't have a right to it?2. It is unfair on those who don't go to universityIn most cases, a university degree can be a huge help in getting a well paid job in the future, so it is only fair that if someone is going to get a financial benefit from going to university, then they should be expected to financially subsidise it.If university is free, then graduates gain a financial advantage whereas those who don't go to university will not get this advantage. This is unfair to the latter. If the financial advantage that graduates receive is balanced out by requiring them to pay for their tuition, then no group has a disadvantage.3. It will devalue university educationAs it is, many students do not value university education and would rather use the experience as a chance to party and get drunk every night. The main reason that actually prevents most students from behaving like this is that they are paying £9000 a year for their education and so it is their own money, not the government's, that they are wasting.If this changed, and the state began to provide free university education, then students will naturally take this for granted, and use the three year course as a chance to have lots of sex, drugs and alcohol. After all, it's not like they're paying for it!4. It will encourage more people to attend universityThis may sound like a good thing, but in our job climate it certainly isn't!Nearly 50% of people go to university (2) and this number is rising, yet only 27% of jobs require an associate degree. (3)So if university is made free, then we would be paying for thousands of people to be educated for jobs that do not exist. Free university would no doubt encourage university education, but this would further saturate the already saturated graduate-job market. Many graduates are unemployed because employers have begun to realise that work experience is often preferential to a degree.Moreover, encouraging young people to go to university will teach them the message that having a trade is not as worthy as a degree, despite the evidence suggesting otherwise. It also breeds a culture of entitlement where young people feel 'above' manual labour, and so employers have to recruit from third world countries to get unskilled labour. This further leads to overpopulation and a strain on public services that is the inevitable consequence of excessive immigration.Finally, too much university education in a competitive job market does young people a disservice. It polarises their job prospects so they are only willing to take specific jobs, for example if someone has a law degree then they will most likely only take jobs in the law industry, despite their being other jobs. Again, this leads to immigration as employers must look overseas in order to find people to do the jobs that graduates would rather not do.So ultimately, the last thing we want to do is encourage people to go to university! (1) http://www.un.org...(2) http://www.bbc.co.uk...(3) http://www.pbs.org...