Advantages and Disadvantages of Free Higher Education Essay

College and university education has become very important in today’s life. Wherever you see an advertisement for job, there is some certain criteria for certain posts. For example for marketing executive employers prefer MBA Marketing person, for eye surgeons hospitals prefer oculist. Without a college degree a person is unqualified for such posts. Some people believe that university graduates should pay the full cost of their education. Others say that university education should be free. Let’s consider advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, higher education leads to a more educated and productive workforce and it does offer some external benefits to society Also, everybody will get an equal chance to pursue higher studies, independent of their economic background and enabling merit to become the sole criteria. If the education is given free to all then admission will be given wholly on merit basis. This will result in increase in level of competition. It will be certainly beneficial to everybody those who could get admissions. Brilliant students will build a strong nation. On the other hand, if people have to pay to go to university, they would value the education more. In this situation, students motivation for achieving good performance is expected to be high. Then, if the government of a country takes policy to fully finance the college education, the government has to limit the number of colleges and universities since their budget is not limitless and it will produce many problems. And Top up fees enable more investment in universities. It will also help attract and keep the best teachers and researchers. This issue has both positive and negative sides as we saw above. The best thing will be to make the education free for those who are economically backward, are really incapable of paying fees for education but they have caliber. But education should not be made free to people who are rich and are capable paying fees for their kids. This will really help to reduce the economical differences in society as poor will be able to get good jobs.