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Bernie Sanders is another one of these socialist democrats who believe that everything should be free.  Along with the many things he wants to be free, or in this case government-provided through tax payers, is free college.  I read in the article Sander’s Proposal Is a Bad Idea by Kevin White, that this proposed idea will cost $70 Billion. $70 dollars which isn’t magically appearing. Truly, I believe that this idea of “Free College” from Bernie Sander is a bad idea.

First of all, Bernie Sanders must have never taken an economic class in college because he has no idea how bad this idea of free college is to the economy.  To explain, schools have incentives to appeal to students through elegant learning facilities and larges ranges of major programs to choose from. If these schools are getting most of their funding from the federal government and not from tuition, the incentive to maintain the quality of the schools is lost.

Keeping on the topic of what tuition provides, it funds sports teams, coach and teacher salaries, and student recreation centers.  The result of Bernie sanders free college plan brings direct government control over how the budget is operated, which is best operated by the school. To clarify, the school knows how to best balance their budget because they actually know what their school social environment is, and the government doesn’t know specifics.

The second reason why this idea is a bad one is that it will decrease the value of college education.  Just as the value of high school diplomas devalued, free college will devalue college degrees.  I know this is true because of history.  To explain, getting a high school diploma years ago was something hard to achieve, making it more valuable.  Right now we are at that stage with college diplomas; they are harder to get so that makes them valuable.  However as high school diplomas became easier to come by, the value of them decreased and the problem is this will happen with college degrees due to Bernie Sanders free college proposal. Why agree this insane idea of free college if it will devalue education more?

Not only does Bernie Sander’s free college idea devalue college education, it will also put a hurting on the private colleges.  As the article Should public colleges be free? No Shifting tuition to taxpayers may derail innovations said, “A public option would crowd out innovations that emerge from private colleges.”  To explain, more people will choose the free route so this will hurt private college tuition rates and their ability to innovate and provide the very well education they do now.

This brings me to my next point, which is that people always choose the free route.  To put this in terms of this Bernie asinine plan, it will cause an influx of of applicants. With so many applicants, the ones that don’t get accepted to these free colleges will be faced with high priced private schools or none at all. Based on the basic economic rule of supply and demand, an increase in applications to private universities will cause the already high-priced tuition to rise.  Obviously these possibilities show that Bernie has never took an economic class in his life.  In return, making this proposed free college plan even worse.

Next, in countries where tuition is free, universities are failing to keep up with the demand of all these students.  According to the article Mediocre, but at least they’re free in The Economist, Germany, a nation with free college, has trouble keeping up with the students.  For example, they are having trouble keeping up with their actual faculties. Also, to prove a point, Germany has no institution of education in the top rankings world wide. Clearly this shows that Bernie’s silly idea of free college is bad and won’t work because it hasn’t worked anywhere else.

Along with the topic of European countries, taxes are really high there. In order to pay for these free colleges in Germany, taxes are high.  Do we really want that in the United States of America? $70 Billion will have to come out of hard working American pockets through taxes and that isn’t fair.  Taxes are already high enough and we should not pay for other peoples education if it has no value. We fought the Revolutionary War to get away from taxation, so why let a single plan raise our taxes?  Really, Bernie’s “free college” will just raise taxes and that is not fair; therefore this makes Bernie’s plan bad.

My last point is that this won’t truly help the poor people.  Bernie Sanders is not close when he said it is for poor people.  According to The Daily Beast, “In 2012, 81 percent of students who obtained bachelors degrees came from families with above-average incomes, vs. 7 percent of kids from bottom-percentile families…from Sanders proposed $70 billion subsidy, $56 Billion will help families with above-average income.” This goes to show how it will not just help the poor.  It shows how the people that are able to pay for college will be helped more than the poor.  Also, there are other reasons poor kids won’t go to college even though it is free.  This may include navigation to college, figuring out how to apply, and mostly the ability to have the academic skill to get into college. Clearly, this plan won’t help poor people the way Bernie Sanders says it will.

In conclusion, I believe that Bernie Sanders proposal of free college is a joke.  If you think it is not a joke you might have never taken an economics class like Bernie Sanders.  Truly his plan is a way to devalue our education system and raise our taxes.  As Americans, we have to stand back and realize if we really want this.  In my opinion, I believe that this plan is very bad and will lead America down the wrong path.