Writing for the Odyssey, college student Alyssa Slicko offers a smart and common sense argument against free college tuition.
Slicko’s reasons against free tuition are personal. She worked hard for her grades, and to pay her own tuition. She did not ask or expect her parents to pay for her college education. She writes “that discipline was my first experience of the ‘real world.'”
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While Slicko speaks of her own experiences, her viewpoint can be applied to all students. After all, Slicko is not the only one who can work hard enough to earn and keep a scholarship.
Another universal point, which may also be a helpful and necessary reminder for some in particular, is that students can’t expect everything to be handed to them for forever. This includes and especially has to do with a college education.
As Slicko also writes in her opening paragraph, with original emphasis:
Slicko gets the desire to have free college tuition. It’s not that she doesn’t. She even writes that in some ways she would like it herself. But she recognizes that “nothing is free and college happens to be something that isn’t.”
As part of her closing, Slicko reminds her readers, with original emphasis, that “a college degree is earned, not handed to you.”
