gre writing issue sample writing 25
- Governments should offer college and university education free of charge to all students.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
The speaker asserts that college and university education should be free for all students. In terms of providing equal opportunity for personal development, this seems to have positive meanings. In my opinion, however, free education at the advanced level is too idealistic in itself and has some possible dangers of marring the educational integrity.
When it comes to our cherished egalitarian principle, college education open to all students seems to be beneficial in many ways. Students who are qualified intellectually but not financially can feel free to develop their talents and increase the chance to contribute to their society by the help of free education. If university and college were not so financially burdensome, many of the young students from relatively poor family would choose higher education, thus could change their whole lives in many undeveloped countries. Expensive tuition is one of many obstacles for them to further their careers.
However, free education, despite its incomparable merits, is not realistic in many countries. Even it is quixotic and squandering to invest limited social resources for free and general college education. Because college education is aimed at furthering specified and advanced knowledge, most of people who are not interested in those specified knowledge could not elicit valuable lessons from it. With limited social resources, most of governments have a lot of impending problems to which they need to use their resources. Moreover, for some excellent students who lack the financial meanings, there could be some measures to support them in most society. Therefore, free education for all students is somewhat injudicious idealism in most cases.
While the unwise financial resource distribution is one thing, there is another problem in free education. In the long run, free college education might mar the educational integrity. Because students not qualified intellectually may enter the colleges and universities, classrooms in those free schools may have so many unqualified students that it can be impossible for some devoted students to discuss serious topics. Though extreme, it is possible that there could be too many students who attend school just because it is free. Academia can be a place not for education or research but for free dilly-dallying if the majority of the students are there for financial reasons.
To sum, despite some possible benefits of free college education, it has problems of unrealistic resource distribution and possible harm to educational integrity. Therefore, I cannot fully agree with the speaker’s assertion that all universities should be open to all students who do not need to pay. True education is not the matter of money, but that of true enthusiasm and devotion to learning.