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Who Will Pay For Free Public Tuition

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“One of the greatest obstacles to escaping poverty is the staggering cost of higher education” (Hollen). Higher education in the United States has been a topic under high magnification during this past election cycle. The Democrats and the Republicans argue about who will pay for free public tuition. Our nation is disenfranchising the middle and lower classes in this country and a resolution seems further than ever away now that Trump is president, however, educator Sajay Samuel provides a different approach to reforming the astronomical costs of higher education. The TED talk in which Sajay Samuel brings forth his ideas for addressing the student debt crisis, is labeled “How College Loans Exploit Students for Profit” ("Sajay Samuel"). Sajay Samuel believes if tuition was based on the income that the student’s family makes, studying what someone loves would be easier to achieve. Sajay Samuel’s aspirations for restructuring a broken higher education system is not only revolutionary in ideology, but plausible as well.

The United States is known as the land of opportunity and for generations, families across the world have immigrated here in hopes of achieving the American Dream. The cost of higher education and the student debt accumulation, however, does not back up this ideology. As of today, there is “$1.26 trillion in total U.S. student loan debt” ("U.S. Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2016 | Student Loan Hero"). Now 1.26 trillion dollars may not sound like

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