Emotion, Reason, Language
The question of free university education could be approached three different ways: through emotion, reason or sense perception. A common emotional response to this question is that free school would help those in need. It is emotionally satisfying for someone to believe they are helping those in need and that they have compassion for those that have less. It is also easy to only look at the emotional side of wanting to help others and to overlook practicality. ‘Free’ college would have to be funded through taxes, and would likely be a disincentive for some to work as hard as they would if it was their own money. A student who is barely paying their tuition might work even harder because of the emotional duty they feel to not waste their money. While emotion contrasts with reason in this situation, both ways of knowledge can co-exist. The aspect of reason would dictate that although free college could be nice, it would be the beginning of a slew of other problems such as higher taxes that would gradually lessen the amount of people in high and respected positions. The government would take so much tax money that people with hopes to become a doctor will not bother going through all the school and investing years of their lives in a profession where their salary will cancel out with those with a bachelor's or less. Human nature dictates that if there is no incentive to work harder, no one will. Some people will do it anyway because they love being in medicine, but that would not be enough people to sustain the field. Tragedy of the commons also shows that people will act in their own self-interest, which also shows they will want to earn money along with or over emotional reward. Sense-perception relates to this topic because many people are accustomed to or have the ‘gut-reaction’ of saying that college should be more affordable. Although almost anyone can agree that tuition is too high across the board, free college will not fix this. The way emotion, reason and sense perception can work together is with lower tuition, but still with a public/ private system that is in place today. And then, there is also the ongoing problem of lack of motivation which is a whole different story regarding public schools.
I really like the points you brought up, especially about emotion. People want to be able to say that everyone can be able to go to college and get an education. However, like you said, this emotion can cloud their better judgement. A person's compassion can be the basis for their opinion regarding whether college tuition should be free or not, often overlooking the facts. In my opinion, reason should be the main way of knowing used in discussing the issue of the cost of college tuition. There are so many side effects, like you mentioned, to making college tuition free that it is necessary to use reason to weigh the costs and benefits. However, sense perception does not seem to be a large component in the issue, unless it involves someones observations of a free college tuition environment vs a regular college tuition environment. Overall, I like how you integrated the three ways of knowing with the issue of the cost of college tuition. :D
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