The progress that has been made in securing social guarantees and services that are offered to people as their undeniable right over the past century is quite remarkable; however, as one might say, there is always a room for improvement, and that particularly concerns the opportunity to get into a university for everyone that is toyed with by many government officials and outstanding politicians, and yet it seems like we just drift apart from that possibility more and more in the recent years. At the outset it would be crucial to state my personal opinion on the topic: I reckon that there is no more significant change that can be done than to allow free access to the university education, and what a great impact that decision would’ve had at all of the societal aspects of life. However, there are quite a few who oppose that idea, so I suggest breaking it down to the key points and regarding every contrasting argument with attention.
On the one hand, no charges for university education can entail many practical difficulties while installing that concept. First of all, to emphatically convey my point, we should look into the nuances; after all, the devil is in details, as they say. Firstly, by bringing this suggestion to life, the state loses a significant amount of money, and all the expenditures on the universities’ maintenance, professors’ salaries etc would be by default given from the country’s budget, and that doesn’t paint a very nice picture. In addition, we shouldn’t forget about the overflow of students who will apply for the university education once that isn’t deterred by the costly fees, and that introduces us to yet another issue: those resources might be spend in a very unwise way, giving the opportunity to get the diploma for people whose ambitions will not align with their chosen field of study in the future, and thus the state loses a tremendous amount of money and doesn’t gain any devoted professionals in return. For example, in my country, Ukraine, the statistical data shows us the record number of people with bachelor’s diploma in the whole European continent — almost 80%; however, the percentage of people who actually put that diploma to use and work according to their hard-earned qualification is stunningly low — only 30%. This way the education loses its primary meaning and becomes something more of a fiction, disregarding all those efforts that are put by the people whose actual desire is to work in those academic fields.
On the other hand, I can’t emphasise what a salient point that is for a country to have an educated nation. First of all, the cultured and educated citizens are a guarantee by itself, given that education is an unequivocal antidote from propaganda and thus the establishment of the authoritarian regime and all the horrors that it entails. For instance, speaking on the geopolitical situation that prevails in the world, it’s abundantly clear that nations with less number of university graduates are more prone to the chaotic and unjust elections that end up with future dictators in power, which seems like rather unfair predicament, considering the vulnerable state those people already live in. According to the statistical research, the outstanding number of armed conflicts is seen in the continent of Africa — over 300 only in the latest decade. Turning to the data once again, we can notice that those countries suffer from the lack of school education as well, not to mention universities.
In conclusion, I would like to stress my point further by admitting that university education is considered a privilege in modern world, and many people see it as a justified occurrence; yet in order to preserve human rights and democratic societies all across the globe we must risk the economical losses that allowing people free university education entails. After all, I believe that was Winston Churchill that once said: «When you choose economical advantages over human rights, you will have no human rights and no economical advantages».