Dear sir or madam from the Teen Ink team,

I’am writing you because I found an interesting article in your recent magazine from May 2023.

It is the opinion of Jason Skoog on “Free College: solving the student debt crisis”. I have some points wich I think would be good to let the readers of your magazine know too.

First of all I am definitely on your side and also think that America should make the colleges free. Like it stands in your article the biggest benefits are that the student debt won’t crush the younger generations longer, because they won’t have to pay back loans of ten thousands of dollars or higher, following of that also students with a lower income might graduate because they could afford it then. A consequence, the students could also have more freedom in noosing a major they enjoy. Following of all that when more people go to college and graduate, it would create a more well-educated workforce and a population wich has a lot of better skills, for example thinking ones.

But what is also important to know is that there are also downsides in making college free.

On of them is that when there’re more people going to a college, it could really decrease the value of a college degree, because then everyone could afford one it isn’t actually impresive.

Also the college students might not take their major and the college in general seriously, e.g. they change their majors constantly, don’t take their classes serious and will just skip them.

But the biggest downside is probably, that the money that has come from the college tuitions needs to come from an other place, the only thing that would be an opportunity are increased taxes for everyone and that won’t make all Americans comfortable and it isn’t like it is in your article that the taxes will paid of because to make this happen everyone of the students needs to have a good jobs wich brings the amount of money they would had to pay for college in a certain period of time, and this is nearly impossible. Following of getting less money the colleges potentially couldn’t offer top quality in Education and Experience for students. Because they might won’t have the equipment for certain projets, also the schools buildings and the whole campus need that money, examples are housing repairs, or building a new library wich often includes buying new books for the students.

To sum it up here there aren’t only benefits like Mister Skoog mentioned in his article, nevertheless I think that making the college free would be a good change, but I also think that everybody also needs to know the downsides, so I would be very happy if you just answer me back or publish my opinion in your next magazine.

Best regards

Quirin Strobl