Should education be free?

Some people nowadays say that education is a right and that it should be free. But I disagree with this point of view. First of all, statements like "education is extremely important" is too general and is effectively meaningless. A more meaningful statement would be something like "everyone should have free access to education up to grade 10" or whatever.

The next problem is: who pays. The primary beneficiary from an education is the educated person. So they should pay the bulk or all of the cost. This is only logical. Yes, interacting with someone with a certain level of education may also indirectly benefit me or society at large, but primarly education benefits the recipient of it.

Just because something is beneficial doesn't give "society" a carte-blanche to steal money and redistribute it for this cause. Many things have indirect benefit to society such as better nutrition or mobility. Does that mean the government should also take money to pay for cars and food for everyone?

The fact of the matter is that education has a cost. There is NO SUCH THING as free education. But when something is offered free, there is often misuse of it. If I could have any car and government would subsidize it by 80 or 90%, obviously I would pick a very expensive one because I am only paying for 10 or 20% of it. Underpricing any product or service causes exaggerated demand. I know so many people who have gone parts of degrees or done completely useless ones which they will not use. Is it even possible that instead of stealing money from citizens to pay for these misused classes, the citizens themselves could have used their own money to improve their lives? Perhaps buy better clothing, or better quality food.

There are always tradeoffs and as Milton Friedman says, no free lunch.

When it comes to accessibility, this is another interesting subject. Apparently 50% of students come from the top 25% wealthiest families while only 5% come from the bottom quarter. In provinces where tuition is higher, attendances, relative to population, is actually HIGHER than in places where tuition is lower.

The main proponents and backers of free education are people in the education system, and the unions. They are the ones who do all the promotion of low or no tuition. But the government is not Santa Claus that can grant every wish.

Let's stop making everyone else poorer to pay for people to either earn more themselves or to just fool around.