Should university education be free for all students?
A full IELTS Writing Task 2 opinion essay on free university education, with a band 9 model answer, the plan behind it, and notes on why it scores on each of the four criteria.
Write your answer
Do this before you scroll. The model answer below will make sense as a comparison and not much use as a template.
Task 2 · 40 minutes · at least 250 words
Some people believe that university education should be funded entirely by the government and free for all students. Others think students should pay the full cost themselves. Discuss both views and give your own opinion.
Spell check is turned off deliberately, because it is off in the real test. Your essay stays in this browser and is never uploaded.
How to plan this one
- 1Read the instruction, not the topic. This one says discuss both views AND give your opinion. An essay that argues only one side has not done the task, however well written it is.
- 2Decide your position before you write a word. You cannot balance an essay whose conclusion you have not chosen, and changing your mind in paragraph three is the commonest way to lose Task Response marks.
- 3Give each view its own body paragraph, then make your opinion the thing that decides between them rather than a third opinion bolted on at the end.
- 4Pick one concrete supporting example per paragraph. Two vague reasons are worth less than one reason developed properly.
Model answer
Written at the top of the band. Read it for the moves it makes, not the opinions it holds: a memorised essay on this topic will not fit the prompt you actually get.
Whether the state or the individual should pay for a degree is a question about who benefits from one. Some argue that public funding should cover the full cost, while others hold that those who gain a private advantage should meet the bill themselves. In my view the state should fund tuition, because the returns from an educated population are collective rather than personal.
The case for full public funding rests on access. Where students pay, the decision to study is made partly on the family's bank balance rather than on the student's ability, and talented candidates from poor households are filtered out before they begin. Pakistan illustrates the point: the cost of a private engineering degree exceeds the annual income of most rural households, so a capable student in Bahawalpur faces a barrier that an equally capable student in Lahore does not. A system that loses that talent is poorer for it.
Those who favour student payment answer that a degree is a private asset. Graduates earn substantially more across a working life, and it is difficult to justify asking a farmer who never attended university to subsidise, through taxation, the higher salary of someone who did. On this reasoning, loans repaid after graduation are fairer than grants funded by everyone.
The objection has force, but it measures only the graduate's salary and ignores everything else a trained population produces. Doctors, engineers and teachers generate benefits that are captured by the society around them, not only by the individual, and a country short of them pays for that shortage in ways no tuition fee records.
I would therefore fund tuition publicly, while accepting that a state which cannot afford to do so for everyone should means test rather than charge all students equally.
Why it scores, criterion by criterion
Task Response
Both views are given a full body paragraph before any opinion is offered, which is what "discuss both views" requires. The position is stated in the introduction and never shifts. The conclusion adds a qualification about means testing rather than repeating what came before, which is how a conclusion earns its place.
Coherence and Cohesion
Four paragraphs, each with one job: access, the counter-case, the answer to it, the conclusion. Cohesion mostly runs through reference rather than connectives: "The objection has force" points back to the whole previous paragraph without needing "However". Only one paragraph opens with a linking phrase.
Lexical Resource
The key ideas are paraphrased rather than repeated: "funded entirely by the government" becomes "full public funding", then "fund tuition publicly". Topic vocabulary is precise and unforced, with collocations such as "means test", "private asset" and "barrier" used naturally rather than inserted to impress.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Sentence length varies deliberately: the opening is short, the Pakistan example runs long with subordination, and the final sentence uses a concessive clause. Relative clauses, conditionals and passives all appear without strain, and no sentence exceeds forty words.
Language worth stealing
Each of these carries a trap as well as a use, so the note matters as much as the phrase.
- The case for X rests on ...
- A clean way to open a body paragraph without "Firstly". It also forces you to name the actual principle, not just a reason.
- The objection has force, but ...
- Concede properly before you answer. An essay that never admits the other side is weaker, not stronger.
- It is difficult to justify ...
- Useful for arguing fairness. Avoid "It is not fair", which is flat and childlike in register.
- I would therefore ... , while accepting that ...
- Ends with a qualified position. Safer and more mature than an absolute claim you then cannot defend.
More Task 2 practice
Last updated 13 September 2026.