University is increasingly essential for most jobs and shutting it off for lower classes shuts them off from a lot of jobs

The argument

A university degree has shifted from an advantage to a precondition across a widening swathe of the labour market, and that shift changes what is at stake in charging for it. Roles that a generation ago were open to school-leavers — in administration, nursing, journalism, technology, much of management — now routinely list a degree as a minimum requirement. Economists call this credential inflation: as more jobs gate themselves behind a degree, the qualification stops being a way to stand out and becomes the floor beneath which applicants are simply not considered. Whatever one thinks of that trend, it is the labour market young people actually face. If a degree is the entry ticket to most decent careers, then the price of that ticket determines who gets to compete for them. A young person from a low-income family weighing tens of thousands in tuition and debt against an uncertain payoff may rationally decline — not because they lack ability, but because the financial risk is intolerable to a household with no cushion, while a wealthier peer faces no such calculation. The cost therefore does not merely burden the poor; it screens them out of the qualification that the economy has made mandatory, and with it out of whole sectors of employment. The result is a barrier that converts existing wealth inequality directly into unequal access to careers. Making universities free and fully funded removes the toll on the one road that now leads to most skilled work, so that entry is decided by aptitude rather than family income. Because university is increasingly essential for most jobs, this argument holds, pricing it shuts the lower classes out of the labour market — and that is why it should be free.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that the credential-inflation premise cuts the other way. If a degree is becoming a mandatory floor, subsidising ever more of them accelerates that inflation, pushing the real filter up to master's and doctoral level and leaving the poor no better placed. Income-contingent loans, repaid only once earnings pass a threshold, already remove the up-front cost that supposedly deters low-income students, so widening access does not require abolishing fees. And because graduates out-earn non-graduates over a lifetime, tax-funded free tuition transfers money from lower-earning non-attenders to future high earners — a regressive subsidy, not an egalitarian one. Strengthening apprenticeships and technical routes serves those locked out more directly than universalising the degree.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Treating a degree as a mandatory floor is a reason to build stronger non-degree routes, not to subsidise ever more degrees, which accelerates the very credential inflation described. [Rejecting P2] Income-contingent loans repaid only above an earnings threshold already remove the up-front cost that deters low-income students, so access does not require free tuition. [Rejecting P3] Because graduates out-earn non-graduates, tax-funded free tuition transfers money from lower earners to future higher earners, so it does not straightforwardly reduce inequality. [Rejecting C] The essentiality of degrees argues for open access through loans and better alternatives, not necessarily for making university free.