Have you also attempted to spend your time at home in a fruitful way? In the coronavirus and quarantine age, influencers worldwide speak about the importance of acquiring hard and soft skills. This trend comes from the belief that this time is an excellent opportunity to develop and increase qualifications to be more valuable for potential employers. Moreover, as Miller-Adams suggests, education can help the world to tackle the crisis by allowing people to use their new skills for better work performance. These benefits of education indicate the necessity for college training to be tuition-free or, in other words, governmentally funded. Although it can be a financial burden, the state should pay tertiary study fees since this measure contributes to science development and supports the nation allowing citizens to recover themselves.
The crisis affects not only shortages at specific workplaces but also the number of required professionals in other industries. Miller-Adams supposes that there will be a high demand for medical and software technical experts after the crisis. Those specialties mostly require certificates or university diplomas, which obviously cannot be obtained given the lack of money among the unemployed population. The state can help its citizens by providing tuition-free programs to increase or even acquire new qualifications. According to estimates by Miller-Adams and her colleagues, such a measure would cost around $5 million – the price of quicker recovery from the crisis directed to insignificant losses. Hence, it is both a profitable and reasonable project to consider.
Instead of providing school low-graders with free community college programs, it is better to offer this opportunity to adults as they have more motivation. This measure is a logical decision to be made as 47% of young students who enter free college programs drop out, while only 27% graduate (Davidson et al, p. 120). If the government can afford to subsidize unenterprising students, why not provide the encouraged community with a chance to improve their lives and contribute to the well-being of the society?
Moreover, scientific studies are usually similar to searching for light in a dark cave. Researchers neither know what result is waiting for them at the end of their work nor can tell the exact time when they come up with a new remedy for humanity. They need to be lucky to discover something significant in a short time. This fact is the reason why scientific searches at universities must be supported. As people do not have money to enroll in university studies in the coronavirus age, the states should provide them and indirectly help the science to strive. Furthermore, the endowments for the universities are expectable to cease considerably, given the crisis. Thus, the program of tuition-free education for adults helps both its subjects and the development of science.
The proposition of governmental funding for tuition-free learning at post-secondary institutions is the plausible resolution of economic breakdown. It might be better than the existing program for school low-graders. In addition to that, considering the total outcome of the project, and generally the amount available from taxes, the cost of the whole project is negligible. It also supports innovation production and research management as the universities are beneficiaries of this measure too. It can become a genuine springboard for population and economics that can prevent deprivation, unemployment, and other social problems by the considerate distribution of human resources to the industries.
Works Cited
Davidson, Christopher, et al. “The Higher Education Funding Revolution: An Exploration of Statewide Community College “Free Tuition” Programs.” Community College Journal of Research and Practice, vol. 44, no. 2, 2018, pp. 117-132.
Miller-Adams, Michelle. “We Need Tuition-Free College. For Adults.” The New York Times, 2020. Web.