It’s not just Bernie Sanders talking about free college tuition. Students are organizing on November 12 for the #MillionStudentMarch to demand free tuition, canceled student loan debt, and a $15 minimum wage for campus workers.
Following a list of their demands, the website reads:
Market Watch in their reporting highlighted students and professors from the City College of New York. The event is set to across around the country, on other college campuses as well. As of Monday morning, it is supported by about 30 groups and individuals. This includes seven Bernie Sanders groups. Noam Chomsky is also a supporter.
The issue mostly started at the grass roots level, with people talking about it on social media. The marches taking place on college campuses have an accompanying Facebook event page.
Student debt is a major concern for many millennials. Market Watch mentioned legal advocates working to make school debt dischargeable with bankruptcy. There’s also a group of students who are refusing to pay off debt from Corinthian College, a school which has closed down.
As has been mentioned, most notably by Rand Paul, free college isn’t actually free. There’s always going to be someone else paying for it. The presidential candidate even had a message for young people to treat an offer of free college like an offer of heroin.
Those fighting for a $15 minimum wage point to “economic justice.” But, as the cities going for the higher minimum wage increase, so do the chances that workers will be completely out of a job by companies wishing to cut costs by hiring less employees or even replacing human work with robots.
And when it comes to free education, 23-year old Alexa Lempel’s rationale is that it shouldn’t stop at the high school level.
An affordable education is a goal every person can get behind, especially with rising student debts. There ought to be a working with the system as well, rather than expecting the system to just hand out a free college education. College does not need to be free in order to be debt-free.
While free college tuition, no student debt and a $15 minimum wage may all seem nice, not everything can be as it seems. Whenever something is billed as free, it’s usually too good to be true.
