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If the question is "should the government be expected to help pay for college expenses?" the answer is yes. Based on need, I would never argue that the government should help a student out if they need help paying for books, a portion of the tuition, or if completely necessary, full tuition. The issue is though is where does it stop? If the government is expected to help pay for college expenses then does that mean that the government should be expected to fund college in general for everyone? If that is the case, than the answer is NO! The government already spends enough money on paying for our public school education kindergarten through twelfth grade, and look how much government controls that education? Personally I do not enjoy taking state wide standardized tests. If the government funded college education than it would just be the No Child Left behind act times one thousand.

Other than government intervention in college education itself, there are many other reasons why college should not be funded by the government. First of all the government does not have the money to fund colleges. The tuition money that one pays to go to college, pays for the professors, maintenance, food, etc, everything the college needs to run efficiently. Even if the government was not in a $10 trillion debt there is still not enough money to ever fund college. With a limited amount of government money professors would not have proficient facilities to perform their research, students would be living in smaller, run down dormitories, worse than they already live in; food would be worse than overnight camp food, and most of all, all the facilities such as a fully stocked library, top science laboratories, gymnasiums, would all be bare minimum and no where close to the expectations that a "higher" education should provide to its students. Attending college is an honor, a gift for working hard for the past twelve years, but if the facilities, and faculty are no better than one can get by attending an inner city public school, why attend college? Doesn't someone go to college in the first place in order to learn from professors who specialize in one field and enjoy an education surrounded by facilities not usually found in a high school, such as research lab?

Not only would underfunding be a major factor in a reason why the government should not fully fund a college education, but student work ethic would decrease too. One reason that students in private schools do well is that the child knows that his/her education is being paid for and they cannot waste the money. This drive to do well applies to college too, if a child does not do well in college than all the money, which can be up to or over $100,000 depending on the school, was just wasted. By requiring tuition for students for colleges, it drives students to do better in the school. Even now, with college tuition, many students still waste money in college by spending four years skipping class and partying, this problem would only increase if college were free.

The government should help pay for college, I would never argue against federal scholarships for students who need or deserve the scholarship, but this funding by the government CANNOT be abused.

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