Dear Editor-in-Chief,

Are we all, as a whole community, doing our part in helping to make college education free for all?

Personally, I truly feel we need to consider making the change to fully 100% free tuition at any California junior college. We don’t ever consider how many people are struggling immensely to be able to pay for their junior college classes, and if you add in the price for class textbooks as well, it is just too expensive for the majority of people attending these schools.

Although we are blessed at junior colleges to not have to pay thousands and thousands a semester for classes, according to (www.bestcolleges.com), you still have to pay anywhere from $50 to possibly even as high as $550 per unit. This may not seem super expensive, but to people in poverty, this is quite a bit of money.  This is also the cost without the textbooks included, which I have learned cost close to $100 usually for required textbooks. Add on top of that paying four or fives times that amount, because in average you take about five classes, and at the end the amount you are paying can go into the thousands. Most people just don’t have that type of money, which could be one of the main reasons they are at a junior college in the first place.

Trying to make people pay these amounts is ridiculous; people should be able to get a free education because the world should want us to learn more and prepare ourselves better for the real world. It will also help us towards a certain career path.

There are ways that you can apply for free tuition; as a matter of fact, I applied for the free tuition which is called FT3 (First Time + Full Time = Free Tuition). I was accepted, and at the moment, I am not paying a single cent for any of my units, except for my textbooks.

All in all, I truly hope that one day, everyone, no matter your living class or situation, will hopefully be able to get free tuition and textbooks, so that they can focus on their education, instead of thinking and worrying about  how are they going to come up with a few hundred dollars to pay for that unit.

Jack Harris