Free University Education: Discuss Both Views Essay (Band 9)
Band-9 discuss-both-views essay on free university education, with balanced argumentation, criteria breakdown, and policy vocabulary.
Some people believe university education should be free for all students, while others think students should pay for their own tuition. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Band-9 sample essay
Whether higher education should be free divides policymakers worldwide, and both camps make serious claims. While cost-sharing has defenders, I believe publicly funded degrees serve society best.
Advocates of tuition fees argue that payment creates value and fairness. Students who pay, they contend, choose courses carefully and study harder — free provision, by contrast, encourages casual enrollment and wasted places. More pointedly, since graduates earn substantially more over their lifetimes, asking taxpayers — including non-graduates — to fund that premium looks like reverse redistribution, subsidizing tomorrow's affluent with today's workers' taxes.
Supporters of free education counter with access and returns. Fees deter talented low-income students regardless of bursaries, because debt aversion runs deepest where financial cushions are thinnest. The result is wasted potential on a national scale. Moreover, societies recoup the investment: graduates pay higher lifetime taxes, fill skill shortages, and drive innovation. Viewed this way, free degrees are not expenditure but infrastructure — as economically rational as roads.
I side with free provision, with one condition: places must track labor-market need, so funding produces nurses and engineers rather than unlimited low-demand courses. Blanket fees block the poor; blanket free places without planning waste money. Targeted free education — generous but guided — captures both fairness and value. Knowledge compounds across generations only when every capable student can enter the system.
(258 words)
Why this scores Band 9
Task Response (9): Both views developed with genuine steelmanning — fees' best arguments (value, reverse redistribution) stated forcefully before rebuttal. Opinion required and given in intro and conclusion, consistent throughout.
Coherence & Cohesion (9): View one, view two, synthesis — each paragraph internally complete. Contrast markers ("while," "moreover," "by contrast" implied) guide without templating.
Lexical Resource (9): Policy precision: "cost-sharing," "debt aversion," "reverse redistribution," "recoup the investment," "skill shortages." Formal, exact, unforced.
Grammatical Range & Accuracy (9): Concessive framing, cleft emphasis, conditional nuance ("only when"). Full control across long sentences.
Vocabulary to steal
- divides policymakers — contested issue framing
- reverse redistribution — poor subsidizing rich (sharp concept)
- debt aversion — fear of borrowing (precise term)
- recoup the investment — recover costs (formal phrasing)
- wasted potential — lost talent (concise, powerful)
- compounds across generations — accumulating benefit metaphor
FAQs
Do I need to give my own opinion in discuss essays?
Only if asked. Some questions end with give your opinion, others do not. Read the final sentence carefully and obey it exactly.
How do I balance the two sides?
Give each view one full body paragraph with two developed points. Balance means equal development, not equal sympathy.
Where does my opinion go if required?
State it in the introduction, develop both sides fairly, then confirm it in the conclusion. Never ambush the reader with a new opinion at the end.
Master every essay type in the Task 2 samples library.