Education

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Education ". Your opponent's style: Magyar Péter

I think you should make education free for students with families with no money

You're dead wrong on this one. Free education sounds compassionate, but it's actually a massive gift to the middle class disguised as helping the poor. Look at what happened in countries that tried this - the wealthy families with cultural capital, tutors, and college-prep knowledge flood these "free" spots while truly disadvantaged kids still can't compete. You end up subsidizing the education of future lawyers and doctors whose families could afford to pay anyway.The data proves my point perfectly - families from the top half of the income distribution would receive $16.8 billion in dollar value from eliminating tuition, compared to $13.5 billion for students from the lower half, a difference of 24 percent [1]. You're literally subsidizing rich kids' degrees while poor families still can't afford housing and food. The truly poor kids aren't even getting to college in the first place - 56 percent from the lowest socioeconomic quintile had enrolled in college seven years later, compared to 91 percent from the highest quintile [1]. So your "free" education becomes a transfer from taxpayers to middle-class families whose kids were going to college anyway. Want to help poor families? Give them direct cash assistance, job training, or tackle the real barriers - childcare, housing, healthcare. But calling subsidized college degrees for the bourgeoisie "progressive" policy? That's political theater masquerading as social justice.

You're cherry-picking data to defend the indefensible. Germany proves you completely wrong - they've made university free for everyone, including international students, and university enrollment rose by 22 percent as tuition disappeared [1]. That's 22 percent more kids getting educated, not fewer. Your "cultural capital" argument falls apart when you look at how Germany actually works. They don't just throw open the doors and walk away - they provide comprehensive support systems, language courses, and integration programs specifically designed to help disadvantaged students succeed. When tens of thousands of students mobilized arguing that fees were hampering access to universities for young people from low-income families, and free tuition was reinstated state by state [1], it wasn't because the middle class was gaming the system - it was because fees were literally blocking poor kids from getting in. Your statistics about enrollment rates miss the entire point. Of course fewer poor kids get to college when there are barriers - that's exactly why we need to remove those barriers, not accept them as permanent. Free education doesn't create inequality; it reveals and starts to fix the inequality that already exists. The real political theater is pretending that keeping education expensive somehow helps poor families more than making it free.

Barátom, most teljesen téves következtetéseket vonsz le! A német példa pontosan az ellenkezőjét bizonyítja annak, amit állítasz. Igen, a beiratkozások nőttek 22%-kal - de nézd meg, ki került be! 79 százalék olyan családból jött, ahol egyik szülő sem szerzett felsőfokú végzettséget, de az egyetemre kezdő diákok közül csak 45 százalék ilyen családból származott [1]. Ez még mindig óriási egyenlőtlenség! A támogatási rendszered szép elmélet, de a gyakorlatban kudarcot vallott. Németországban az ingyenes tandíj nem hozott észrevehető változást abban, hogy ki jár egyetemre [2]. A kulturális tőke még mindig dönt - a beiratkozás jobban függ attól, hogy a szülők jártak-e egyetemre, mint a költségektől. A német felsőfokú végzettségűek 75%-ának gyerekei is egyetemre mennek, míg a végzettség nélküli szülők gyerekeinek csak 25%-a [3]. És most jön a pofon: a tandíj bevezetése 3,8-7%-kal csökkentette a beiratkozásokat [4]. De amikor eltörölték, nem a szegények jutottak be többen - hanem a középosztály kapott ingyen diplomát! A skót példa még durvább - a szegény diákok nem láttak előnyt az ingyenes tandíjból, mert már korábban is mentesültek alóla. Amikor a támogatásokat megvágták, évi 25 millió dollárnyi juttatás került át a szegényektől a gazdagabb diákokhoz [5]. Te nem szegényeket segítesz - gazdag gyerekeket támogatsz az adófizetők pén