The Debate on Public Funded Education
The debate of having public funded education or not dates back to the era of America's founding fathers. Education has been an important element in building the society but its access is hindered by the fiscal burden making the attainment of higher education to be a remote idea. Education explains the social, economic and political divide with the less educated made to subordinate themselves to elites such as policymakers, lawyers, scientists and professors. Many people have raised concerns about the increased costs of attending the public colleges because it locks out students from low-income families. These negative outcomes are still affecting a big section of the population despite the efforts to provide financial aid to facilitate learning for the needy and eligible students. A profound analysis of the education debate reveals that it should be made free because it is an avenue of making people free and capable of solving every day's problems.
Equal Access to Education
Everyone deserves to be educated and the government should provide free education to make it accessible for those who cannot afford it (Ball 45). It is wrong to prevent intelligent people from realizing their dreams and therefore, the only way to guarantee a full exploitation of the talents is to ensure that everyone has an equal access to education. However, the free education to fully unlock the potentials in the population make parents to be free from their responsibility of educating the children. In an attempt to tap into the potentials of the intelligent people, it can be argued that there are many free riders who want to run away from their responsibilities. It is however possible to filter out the parents running away from responsibilities to ensure that the free education effectively grow talent.
The Importance of Free Education
In the modern civilized society, the need to guarantee free education is of utmost importance. The accruing benefits should provide enough pressure to governments to ensure that there are free education systems. In case there is a cost to be incurred, it should be kept at the bare minimum to ensure that the basic requirements needing finances are met. Despite the crystallizing perception that the right to free education is being observed by governments, the reality proves it impossible to implement the idea on paper. The access to free education seems to be opposed by government because of fears of making education less valuable. The position can be supported through the ideas raised by Antonio Gramsci who argued that there should be different classes of people in the society in order to maintain social order (Short 199). However, when the argument is introduced in education, it becomes increasingly impossible to address the challenges of the low-income families who can only improve their living standards through seeking long-term solutions embedded on education.
Enacting Sound Education Policies
Developed and developing nations are enacting policies to ensure that students access free primary and secondary education. The position is supported by both liberals and conservative members in the population and the pressure to enact sound education policies is mounting. Students who secure positions to join institutions of higher learning are able to access loans and grants in order to be productive members of the community over the future. The position has however being criticized by scholars who believe that making education free will make children fail to concert on the studies. Many learners are likely to believe that free commodities are less valuable. Besides, the loans offered to students becomes a difficult financial problem to address in their future. The lending policies are not tailored to effectively meet their requirements. As a result, students find themselves in huge debts because of the high interests on the principal amount offered. It therefore turns out that attempts to address the problem end up creating long-term challenges. However, this position should not be used to discredit the concept of free education, because amending the lending policies makes it possible for there to be a fair competing platform regardless of one's background.
Addressing Inequality through Free Education
In a system where only the rich are the only ones capable of accessing education to get richer, making it free will make it possible to address the problem of inequality through the strict adherence to meritocracy. The approach will fully guarantee the quality of services and good provided in the industries, hence boosting trade in the international market system where there is an emphasis on quality. Fixing the problem of poor economic performance should first begin by making education free to increase affordability. For a long time, nations have been looking at better ways to boost the economy but the truth is that the solutions do not lie in partnerships with the hegemons in the world market. Every success lies in the improvement of the quality of education and making it free to tap the potential of the great minds. Besides, globalization of economies requires that the best services and products are availed, an objective that cannot be realized with the existing inequalities as a result of the high costs of learning. However, solving the problem in this manner has been criticized because of the attempt to interfere with the social order. Although there are economic inequalities rooted in disparities in the provision of education, this is not a long-term solution to prevent possible revolutions in the future in order to restore equality.
The Future of Free Education
Conclusively, the debate on whether education should be free or not will continue in the future with both sides having sufficient facts to back up their claims. However, the bottom line is ensuring that education is free in order to create equal opportunities in the job market and improve the quality of services and goods produced. The rich people seem to have been creating a promising future where these positive changes can be realized but it is increasingly impossible to ensure that they do not use their power to meddle with the policies. Providing free education will guarantee the global goals of achieving the right to free education. Due to the pressure to embrace globalization, countries cannot continue failing to exploit the talents in the population to ensure there are great minds enhancing their profits in the international free market. The mounting pressure to adopt globalization makes it increasingly impossible to uphold isolationist policies on market matters in order to protect the local market. Therefore, the future of world economies can only be promising if there is emphasis on the provision of free education after which the great minds will be incorporated into the industries without discriminative mechanisms on whether one hails from a rich or a poor family.
Works Cited
Ball, Stephen J. The education debate. Policy Press, 2017.
Short, Nicola, et al. "Difference and inequality in world affairs." Gramsci: space, nature, politics (2013): 199.
