Governments should offer free education for students with financial difficulties to go to university? That is a kind-hearted suggestion, but not always a good idea.

For students having difficulty in affording college tuition fees, free opportunities for university help students to have a better future. Without these grants, poor students will be more likely to choose not to continue their studies and go to work once they have finished high school. Chances are that lacking bachelor’s degrees will prevent them from finding a highly rewarding job because they don’t have a formal acknowledgment of their quality. Consequently, they can hardly change their financial status. Therefore, it forms a vicious cycle for those who are born in poverty.

Nonetheless, to support all college tuition is too expensive. The suggestion is implausible. There are so many students struggling in poverty in a country. If the governments pay the tuition for each of them, there must be a heavy burden.

A heavy burden on education can influence other infrastructure of the country. Besides education, medical care, social security, scientific development, and many other aspects are essential for maintaining a healthy society; therefore, shifting too much budget on education may well cause a higher financial burden on medicine, higher crime rate, stagnation of science innovation instead. What’s more, for impoverished nations, even urgent problems like food shortages are not settled, let alone the education fees.

Paying for the students who cannot afford university tuition also indicates that a human being can reap without sowing. Tuition supported, the poor students know that they will be helped by others anyway. There is a social investigation that students with government tuition support in the undergraduate stage usually continue depending on social welfare instead of finding a job. And many students run up credit card debt, believing someone will pay for them.

These above phenomena raise questions upon what we are supporting education for. The essence of education is not just to enrich the knowledge of a person, but to teach them the virtue of human – altruism, responsibility, honesty, and reliability. But now the suggestion seems to be counterproductive to our original intention.

Governments offering tuition fees for students in poverty is a warm-hearted suggestion. However, the policy will reduce the budget for other infrastructures and may develop a bad habit of profiting other’s toil. A more plausible suggestion is to lend the money to students, and let them return it when they step to the society. Teaching a lesion for self-responsibility is much better than giving a free ride.