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If you spend between 15 and 30 billion dollars on higher education, you could offer public education in America for free says Jeffrey Sachs in his book The Price of Civilization. Though this sounds like an awful lot of money, it could actually save money in the long run.

As of now, colleges, universities and for-profit schools are eating up billions of federal dollars. Students who get priced out in universities around America, especially in California, they tend to go to community colleges or completely drop out.

 Even community colleges today are forced to raise fees due to shortage of funds. These colleges are being forced to cut enrollments. This again fuels a demand for the for-profit schools among students and sadly these colleges have very low rate of graduation. The present system is such that we all pay more and graduation rates are as low as ever.

Graduation rate of Americans who join universities and colleges is at 30 percent currently. It is possible to enhance this rate only if we ensure that our students are not forced to work after school hours to pay their huge tuition fee. Instead of six or more years, students will then be able to graduate in just four years. The need of the hour therefore is to focus on bringing down their tuition fee to a level that they can all afford.

By ensuring that all our 18 to 24 year olds are able to attend college, we can also reduce our rate of unemployment by two million people. Government assistance will then be required only by a few people.

Money can be freed up for other services as states will be effectively relieved of their fund problems through federal higher education programs. Other developed nations that have free universities serving students, America lags far behind as its economy is unable to keep pace. This is because, even after making K-12 public education free, US is unable to fund higher education.

Graduates in our country can become more productive if only the burden of student debt is removed by the government. If students have enough money to spend, it means our economy is growing strong.

There are other reasons why we are unable to provide free higher education. In order to get back to our once powerful position in the world, our workforce and citizens must become more educated. It is a well known fact that those who have a higher education degree are happier and healthier. Nationally, it is possible to improve our societies by reducing crime rates and enhancing social welfare.

Our President has indeed made it vociferously clear about his intentions of increasing number of people with higher education degrees, but has done little towards supporting this initiative. Our politicians must be pushed to support free higher education. We must also assure our middle class that their post secondary education burden can indeed be alleviated through federal programs.

Realistic caps must be set on tuition increases and schools must be encouraged or even forced to concentrate spending on instruction and research as this is the only way quality of education, affordability and accessibility can be improved.