In recent decades, states have reduced their subsidies to institutions of high education, shifting the financial burden to students and families. After World War II, the federal government recognized that investing in higher education would benefit society as a whole. The rise of libertarianism in the past forty years has promoted the view that the consumer, not society, should pay for what is now seen as a personal benefit. This attitude exacerbates inequality, since those at the top can more readily pay for their children’s education than those with less money. It’s worth mentioning here that all higher education in Finland is tuition-free. The Finns consider education to be a human right, which people should not be required to purchase.
Making college free for all creates problems, to be sure. What about students and families already deeply in debt? Shouldn’t their debts be forgiven? What about those who already sacrificed to pay staggering debt?
Two Connecticut professors—Stephen Adair of Central Connecticut State University and Colena Susankreed1 of Gateway Community College— review some of the issues here, in an article that appeared in the New York Times.
The last 40 years have seen an ever-widening income gap between those with college degrees and those without. Over that interval, incomes have soared for those with advanced degrees and declined for those with high-school diplomas or less. As a result, the route to economic security for young people depends increasingly on access to higher education. Yet it keeps getting more expensive.
Since the Great Recession, the public portion of the operating costs for state universities and colleges in Connecticut, where we teach, has declined 20 percent; since the 1980s, it has declined by nearly half. In the 1960s, tuition for a Connecticut state university was $100 a year, which could be earned by working fewer than 100 hours at minimum wage. Today, a student needs to work nearly 1,000 hours at the state minimum of $12 an hour to pay the $11,462 required for tuition at the least expensive state university in Connecticut.
Our state is hardly unique in abdicating its responsibilities to the next generation. By 2018, only four states had returned to prerecession funding levels at public two- and four-year institutions. In Arizona the decline has been especially acute: 2018 per-student higher-education funding was down 55.7 percent from 2008, and average student tuition costs at four-year institutions increased by 91 percent. In Louisiana, these figures were 40.6 and 105.4 percent, respectively.
The Biden administration has proposed reforms to ease the student-debt crisis. But a real solution must upend a system of cascading inequities. Restoring the dream of higher education as an equalizer requires a holistic solution that attacks all the sources of the problem: a lack of investment in common goods, growing tuition and student debt and exploitative labor practices that undermine the quality of education.
The rise in tuition costs, combined with the growing economic value of a college degree, fuels the crisis of student debt, which today totals $1.7 trillion. To pay for a year of school, three-quarters of American families pay at least 24 percent of their average family income, even after grants are distributed.
As students pay more, they often receive less. Nationwide, nearly 75 percent of all faculty positions are off the tenure track, often without benefits or long-term job prospects. Ironically, hundreds of thousands of some of the most educated people in the country now shuttle to and from campus, juggling gigs to try to eke out a living while unable to give students the attention they deserve.
While President Biden’s American Families Plan includes a provision for free community college, this is an incomplete solution.
The College for All Act of 2021, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal, would address the crisis in full. In addition to making community college tuition-free for all, it would make two- and four-year public colleges and minority-serving institutions free for poor and middle-class students and increase funding for programs that target students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Nationally, in 2016, the net average price of college attendance (the total cost minus all grants awarded) for students coming from the lowest family income quartile amounted to 94 percent of total family income. Unsurprisingly, poorer students are less present at higher levels of education nationwide. In Connecticut, students of color are overrepresented at the introductory levels and increasingly underrepresented at higher levels.
We stand to exacerbate racial and class divides if we create a dead end for poorer students by cutting off funding at the associate level, stunting their progress or requiring them to take on debt to continue. By including both two- and four-year institutions and by expanding Pell grants so they can be used to cover living and nontuition expenses, the College for All Act would help bridge the significant earning gap between those with some college education and those with bachelor’s degrees.
The measure would also address the labor precarity corroding learning conditions: It would require that at least 75 percent of courses be taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty members and help transition short-term and part-time faculty members to those positions.
To fund these reforms, the bill proposes a tax on trades of stocks, bonds and derivatives, to raise more than $600 billion over the next decade.
The College for All Act complements recent efforts in states like California, Connecticut, Georgia and New York to boost two- and four-year institutions. While these efforts are distinct, they all seek to facilitate the movement between two-year colleges and public universities and improve equity...
To the extent that higher education reinforces existing inequities, it contributes to the affliction it is supposed to ease. Solving this problem will expand opportunities for individuals, grow the middle class, improve the skills of America’s work force and strengthen democracy. But this won’t happen on its own; it needs a push. So let’s push.
Expanding Pell Grants is certainly a good idea as they are means tested. There is some evidence at my institution that this would increase retention rates among Pell eligible students. Making all college free for all students will be a huge subsidy for the upper middle class because students from those households are far more likely to attend college and far more likely to attend colleges with high sticker prices than students from relatively low income households. Free 4 year college will reinforce existing inequalities.
NYC had free 4 year Public Universities from 1865-1975 . The Financial Crises had little to nothing to do with the city’s operating budget .
But , means testing is the downfall for good public policy. It always winds up pitting the working class against each other as the working poor are pitted against those who are a few paychecks away from those conditions. And when that happens those excluded always are happy to see cuts in those programs.
Joel,
Means testing does not pit poor people against each other. It does mean that the relatively wealthy who do not need this benefit will not get it.
I agree that the working wealthy wish to have their children’s education at NYU, Colombia, and Harvard paid for just like the children of the relatively poor have their education at NYU, Columbia, and Harvard paid for and thus will be strong advocates for this policy. Of course you and I know that the tiny number of students from relatively poor households who attend those schools already have their educations paid for. The only thing the free college policy will do is leave an extra quarter of a million dollars in the pockets of the working rich at taxpayer expense. Free college will simply reinforce the status quo. Why else would it be so popular in the suburbs?
Ridiculous assertion that free colleges will be taken advantage of by the wealthy. The wealthy will send their children to elite private colleges and pay handsomely. State & City colleges should return to provide a free education for students who meet the qualifications as it was in the 60’s & 70’s. I was a beneficiary of a free college education in the 60’s.
Teachingeconomist
Cuomo’s much touted free State tuition program leaves out every two income family that includes a teacher , cop , fireman, sanitation worker,construction worker … …. . ,in the South East corner of the state . Okay i am being a bit glib. The point is those are not the “working wealthy” .
The Median Household income in Nassau County is 121k. So two years from now when the means test fails to be indexed to inflation 50 % wont qualify .
And when they don’t qualify they all too often vote for those who promise to gut these programs .
Micheal,
You think that the working wealthy (say folks with household income in the top 10%, at least $200,000) would refuse to send their children to UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, Cornell (for some colleges), University of Michigan, University of Washington, UC Berkeley, UCLA, or any other highly respected public university at no cost and instead choose a school like NYU and pay over $200,000 in tuition costs? That seems implausible to me. Send the kids to Michigan and give them the $200,000 for a down payment on a house or to pay for postgraduate education.
Once again I think that policy would reinforce existing inequalities.
I think that a much higher progressive income tax rate, similar to what we had in the 70’s would go a long way to solving some of our problems. If the wealthy paid and effective rate say 45% then maybe public colleges could be free for qualified students and since the tax burden would be borne more by the wealthiest they would be paying more for education. Fairer?
Michael,
I am happy to see you now endorsing the position I took at the top of this thread: increasing the size of Pell grants for qualified students instead of making education free for the relatively wealthy.
“Making all college free for all students will be a huge subsidy for the upper middle class because students from those households are far more likely to attend college.”
No, I don’t think so, TE. That doesn’t really make sense: the reason upper middle class students are far more likely to attend college now is because their families can afford it.All that would change.
Free college for all would be a revolutionary change that would ripple through all these institutions. We can only look to Euro nations doing this to see how it might shake out. From what little I know, there would still be highly-selective institutions admitting on merit alone. Those institutions will still have to struggle with how much to relax requirements in order to have a diverse campus, if that’s what they want. But the biggest changes would be at the other end. I would expect to see huge growth in colleges with a tech/ career bent, perhaps including teachers colleges. There would perhaps be more/ better communication between industry/ job fields and the tertiary ed sector on what is wanted/ needed. The big challenge to fed Dept of Ed would be certifying colleges—some kind of accountability for all the govt $$ spent.
Bethree5,
First, the student would have to graduate from high school. Can we agree that 1) students from low income households are much less likely to graduate from high school and 2) if you do not graduate from high school how much college costs has no impact you decisions about attending college?
Next, of course, is the short term opportunity cost of attending college: forgone earnings. Could we also agree that for those that graduate from high school, the cost to the family of giving up that child’s labor income today is far higher for a low income household than for a middle or high income household?
TE, I suggest you read Sara Goldrick-Rob’s award winning book about the real costs of higher education.
Dr. Ravitch,
Thank you for the suggestion but higher education is my profession. I regularly speak with high level administrators about cost and other issues.
Are you aware that Finland has a much larger proportion of its youth in college than we do?
See figure 5: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgh
It would be fine to make college free, but more has to be done to make sure students beginning college are prepared and participate in programs that encourage them to become successful.
I agree – but I think taking this step might help bring along K12. Regardless of whether college is free, those who are unprepared for it will flunk out. That info will trickle back to K12 and perhaps motivate admin/ teachers/ students. But looking from another angle: if we make college free for any age, as they do in a number of Nordic countries, those many folks who don’t do well in K12 but gain focus as they mature/ work would be encouraged to plan for future, knowing they have more chances.
What happened to college age students beginning about 40 years ago, when City college was free, is now happening to senior citizens in NYC under Mayor de Blasio with the support no less of the union leaders. NYC is planning to move its retirees out of traditional Medicare into Medicare Advantage to reduce costs. The UFT is claiming of course that the benefits will be as good or better, otherwise they will not agree to the plan. UFT and other unions are pushing HARD to get buy-in. All this was kept secret from retirees since 2018 contracts until recently, about one month ago when someone leaked the information out. Imagine the outrage retirees feel at being used as a bargaining chip to give in-service members a retroactive raise and being kept in the dark for 3 years only to find out that this was supposed to go into effect this July! For myself to stay in traditional medicare and purchase a Medigap & drug policy would increase my yearly medical expenses by nearly $4,000. I retired 11 years ago and already have to contend with about a 30% cost of living increase with virtually no cost of living increase in my retirement pay.
It gets worse. Both chambers of the NYS government have majorities for a bill to enact NY Health Care, a single payer plan for NY residents that would eliminate private insurance, co-pays, etc. This would remove NY City/union claims that the city cannot afford the current situation. Yet the unions, especially the UFT lobbied AGAINST allowing a vote for this on June 10th and was killed.
Underlying these fiscal problems in my view is the enormous concentrations of wealth. The wealthy have successfully fought for lower taxation and passing the burden onto those less able to pay such as raising tuition at city colleges, and now in NYC trying to reduce benefits for retirees.
I am disturbed that Dianne Ravitch supports Maya Wiley. Maya Wiley is married to a very wealthy Jewish white male, but you would never know that from her campaign ads. I cannot believe that as mayor she would support policies such as higher taxation on the wealthy to pay for a better social safety net, better funding for public education, etc. In my view Wiley would be another Obama. Say all the right things to get elected but do a “180” once in office. Remember Obama bailed out the bankers and even supported their multi-million dollar bonuses while being bailed out! Of course bankers were his biggest contributors for his presidential aspirations.
We are in a sad state of affairs. The wealthy bought our politicians and are buying offices too. What is it that Louis Brandeis said something about democracy v. wealth…….?
Oh, one last point. Tali Farhadian is married to a hedge fund millionaire, billionaire? But I haven’t noticed his name in her ads – Weinstein.
If NYC pulls off this betrayal, I fear that other districts in the state and elsewhere will emulate these cost cutting measures that transfer teachers’ healthcare to a private company that can deny services and medications and pass the greater costs on to elderly individuals. This is a sham! The main reason Medicare was created was because the elderly cannot compete fairly in the marketplace. We need an improved Medicare for All and cut corporations out the profiteering loop. We need quality public healthcare like most nations in the western world.
Absolutely. This sets a precedent. Will the UFT bargain away more retiree benefits in future contracts? I have no doubt that will happen with this precedent.
I understand hoe NYC can change the rules for current staff if it is the result of newly negotiated contract. I don’t really get how retirees can be included in the terms of the agreement. I wonder if there is a precedent or case that can be made that retirees and NYC made an agreement with the teachers at the time the they retired, and the city should have to abide by the agreement. It seems so patently unfair to make the change retroactively for retirees.
To repeat many unions have great health insurance ,if they can keep it. And of course just like the free CUNY system that I attended. We pit working and middle class people against one another .
How do you think a worker without a pension feels about your complaint about your supplemental being cut when they have no pension or supplemental health insurance. At least you acknowledge that it was the Unions in NYS that opposed the M4all proposal. How many of OUR fellow union members have no problem with that? I hear it all the time.
And not just from the ignorant right wingers.
Our unions are stuck in a 1920s mindset when offering healthcare, much of it in house through clinics, was seen as an attraction to gain and hold members. As many employers did the same. That later got changed to a private insurance system. If that strategy was working the private sector union movement would not be at 6% of the work force .
But there are parallels here to the College tuition issue. As those who can either easily afford the tuition , those who do not attend and those on grants care little about those getting squeezed. What should be a universal benefit with no means test becomes unaffordable for many.
The transfer of cost you say retirees are experiencing will proceed to future cuts to the active membership soon enough.
Actually not sure about this but, I believe in NYC medical care for NYC retirees was part of a NYC Charter Amendment in the late 1940’s. I don’t know if unions had a hand in this but certainly the UFT did not exist at that time.
Michael Brocoum
It was created even before that. But wages and legacy costs are part of a negotiated process. Now would have been the time to take Health insurance off the table and back the State plan.
I was totally with you at first. Obviously moving retired teachers into a Medicare Advantage Plan is a betrayal, a bait-&-switch & can they do that legally?! My engr husband is officially retired but works on PT at age 71 for various reasons, and one of them is: the Obamacare-style high-deductible employer plan for PT post-retirees is cheap but decent compared to what we will have to pay when he ‘really’ retires, because Medicare is bare-bones & needs the MedAdv suppt. We too will take a hit of several $hundreds/month.
But you lost me at “Jewish white male.” Really?
And you haven’t even connected her to this DeBlasio/ AFT scam. You’re just saying because Wiley is wealthy, she would do a 180 once elected, because how could she personally support higher taxes on her own family to pay for a better social safety net? Reality check: anyone running for Mayor of NYC is by definition wealthy or they couldn’t manage it. Does that automatically make her ‘another Obama’? Does it mean residents looking for a better safety net will be waiting for Godot [until a non-wealthy candidate runs for Mayor?] Does it mean all [by definition wealthy] candidates for Mayor are neoliberals whose campaign promises are lies?
As for your excoriation of Obama admin bailing out bankers, consider the alternative.
And wow, one more jab at wealthy Jews in your closing line. Sheesh.
Tali Weinstein’s husband is a hedge fund millionaire (billionaire?), and the last type of individual I would want in such a position as D.A. in NYC. In my view, based on what I have read in the news about them, hedge funds have done enormous damage to the society at large to benefit the few of the super wealthy. Hedge funds purchase successful companies by borrowing against those companies assets, hollow out those companies by laying off workers and selling off whatever assets they could for quick short term profits that ultimately destroys them. So yes, I do not want anyone associated with hedge funds to be in a position of such importance.
As for Wiley, she presents herself as a person of the “people”. Nuff said.
President Obama had nothing in common with candidate Obama. President Obama did a 180 not just in finance but also launched an attack on public education that Republicans could only dream about. Ultimately it was Obama’s betrayal of homeowners facing eviction for the banking crisis that the banks created. The immediate result was that the Democrats got walloped in the midterms and later the presidency with Trump’s victory. How did that work out?
Obama got a big campaign boost from the disastrous consequences of Republican economic policy. The Tea Party movement picked up major steam from both Bush’s bank bailout and Obama’s recovery act, with a particularly virulent response to Obama’s [puny] $75billion homeowner’s bailout. They were the mobilizing force for Republican candidates nationwide in 2010. That was not a wave of angry underwater homeowners.
This article explains it nicely.
https://www.dailyposter.com/the-policy-that-might-have-rescued-america-and-stopped-trump/
I see where you’re coming from. But “This may have played a role in turning Michigan and Wisconsin from blue to red in (the 2016) presidential election” is a long way from “The immediate result was that the Democrats got walloped in the midterms and later the presidency with Trump’s victory.”
Thanks for the link. There were a handful of initiatives to help underwater homeowners put in (mostly in 2009 – which the 112th congress immediately tried to repeal). They were aiming to help 9million homeowners, but can’t find any stats on how many actually were helped. I did find a congressional review report outlining all the difficulties with making these things work. “Cramdown” as described in your link certainly looks like it was more efficient when in practice. Let’s hope Sanders and Warren stay on the case.
Certainly agree on Warren & Sanders.
Michael Brocoum
I agree with you about Obama on many fronts . .However not rescuing home owners had nothing to do with the Trump Party revolt of 2010.
If you remember the staged rant heard round the world on CNBC by Rick Santelli that Koch started the Tea Party with, was against bailing out home owners.
The liberal vs. conservative, Trump vs reality debacle we’ve been living through has sucked much of the air out of the room…and the planet, tragically.
But there’s a generational issue at play here, too.
I remember thinking years ago….what will happen when all of those baby boomers (including moi!) get old?
Well, here we are.
I’m embarrassed that this is the world us oldsters are leaving these kids.
You could have predicted how the boomers would have turned out back in 1969. Shortly after the draft lotto went into effect the anti war movement was gutted as half the draft pool no longer had skin in the game . They became conservative armchair patriots for the next 50 years.
I really disagree, Joel. Many of us who ‘benefited’ by way of pulling a high lottery number in ’69 lost friends in VN and hardly forgot what it felt like to be that close to the choice of being pulled into a jungle war where chances were not great vs breaking the law/ moving to Canada never to return, etc. We hardly turned into “conservative armchair patriots for the next 50 years.” The folks I know continued anti-war demonstrations for years, went into job fields where they thought they could implement their ideals, worked in Muskie and McGovern campaigns, and have been lifelong progressive Democrats.
bethree5
Many of us have been progressives. How ever Hubert Humphrey gets defeated in 68 yet McGovern got decimated by Nixon. The war for all to many was only a concern when they had skin in the game. First the Lottery than the all volunteer army and Americans can tolerate frequent foriegn wars .
Two of the best guest speakers I’ve had in my history classes over the years were a U.S. Vietnam combat veteran and a Vietnam War-era conscientious objector who did alternative service. Both are Baby Boomers with stories that held my students spellbound.
The fact that we ended up with the January 6, 2021 attack on our Capitol after everything that we went through as a nation during the 1960s and early 1970s will astound me until the day I die.
January 6 was a disaster years in the making…. but I have to wonder at what particular moment in time it became clear this “train” was headed off the tracks?
It was long before my current students first walked into any school, that’s for sure.
I look at us boomers differently. We are like the generation participating in the great industrial multiplication of wealth 1890-1929. Only a few were Carnegies & Rockefellers, most were like my forebears who parleyed door-to-door sales of homemade canned meats & a good recipe into a going industry that went bust in the Crash, retaining just enough assets to pass along mid/ upper-mid-class wealth down maybe two generations max. They were my great-grandparents, and during the Depression they managed to hang on to their mini-mansion and partitioned it to house all their relatives. Yes, the folks who speculated their wealth away were of the same generation; my relatives were the victims of those scams.
My instinct (like that of my great-grandparents) is to hang on to the house and pinch expenditures to maximize the retirement savings, so that my kids can live on, on the lower-middle-class salaries their generation’s crummy economy allows them, supplemented by income we earned when times were good, maybe live jointly in the house they were raised in when they have families [by which time the mortgage will be paid off]. And I recognize that being able to do that is just because we’re on the front end of the boomer generation. People even 5 yrs younger than us will not be so lucky. This is how things will go until we can, through our votes/ activism, change the spiraling rich-poor gap & re-build the middle class.
Sobering thoughts: a plan to get through this thing.
I have to wonder how other parents imagine the future? I worry, too. There’s got to be millions of us out there thinking these thoughts….
Thank you for mentioning this: “The Finns consider education to be a human right …”
I knew that some EU countries has free Masters degree level education for citizens, but not to this level.
Good to know.
-Shira
For post secondary education the Finland have an a very challenging standardized entrance exam. Students will often spend a year studying for it, and relatively few Fins attend post secondary institutions.
Yes, my German friend told me that free college there comes at a price–the students are tracked into different pathways depending on their exam performance. This isn’t the free college heaven that progressives seem to think it is.
And, as the parent of two underachieving children, it wasn’t until they had some “skin in the game” (helping to pay for their own education in college), that they realized its full value.
Also, my students are currently receiving a free high school education, and many simply complain, resist, and have no idea of its value, while students in less developed countries who have to pay for education realize its value and work hard.
I do not support 100 percent free college but am open to figuring out how to reduce the cost to something reasonable.
Fair enough: only those willing to work hard and be persistent will get through in any post secondary education, anyway, so it seems fair to have a high entrance standard for free education, as long as everyone had an equally good opportunity for preparation for that entrance exam.
ShiraDest,
It is good to have another heterodox poster here. The orthodox view here is that allowing any standardized exam to have any influence on college admissions is a terrible thing. Many believe standardized test results say nothing about a students academic ability. A country like Finland, where a standardized exam result is the only admissions criteria would be viewed very badly here.
Finland has no standardized testing in grades K-9.
TE, going back to your “relatively few Finns attend post secondary institutions,” this source says 74% of Finns do so https://www.statista.com/statistics/528083/finland-population-with-educational-qualification-by-education-level/
Montana Teacher, I have a 50-yr-old acquaintance with the German tracking system, and as far as I know (I continue to try to update it) it has not changed. Germany is well-known for tracking kids into vo-tech vs academics at an early age, and they are often used as a counterpoint to PISA scores, since the tracking starts before age 15 & those on the vo-tech track didn’t take those tests. That may have changed recently (not sure). Nearly all other Euro/ E Euro systems delay the tracking into vocational fields until after age 15 – definitely including Finns. Most Euro/ E Euro ed systems offer multiple career paths (including academic) at age 16. The more advanced of these ed systems allow for lateral moves among vo-tech, tech, engrg, & academics.
TE: “The orthodox view here is that allowing any standardized exam to have any influence on college admissions is a terrible thing.” I disagree. Do any here have an issue with the usual Euro method of exams administered for passage from grammar school to high school, then from high school to college? I don’t. But it’s an apples to oranges comparison. Euro ed standards (compared to ours) are open frameworks, not hundreds of bullet-points as in CCSS, tested annually starting in 3rd grade [which most states follow tho they’ve tweaked and rebranded them]. SAT/ACT are not ‘good’ tests: they’ve been shown repeatedly to have no correlation to how kids perform in college beyond the 1st semester of freshman year, which correlation is attributed to the overlap between sr yr hisch curriculum & 1st semester freshman curriculum.
Bethree5,
My source is unfortunately behind a paywall, but you can at least read the beginning: https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/04/24/too-many-well-educated-finns-are-missing-out-on-university
In Finland,there is no standardized testing from K-9, the very years we torture kids with constant testing. The Finns do not have universal higher education, but all higher education is tuition free, including graduate and professional studies.
Libertarianism as ALEC/Koch defines it is turning the United States into a land without laws, where individuals could be shot down on the streets just because someone else claims they feared for their lives.
I think the stand your ground laws are part of that ALEC/Koch insane libertarian’s thoughtless theory of government that comes straight from hell.
Bill Gates once belonged to ALEC.
What do Bill Gates and Traitor Trump have in common? Jeffery Epstein
Lloyd, I agree with you on this. This also goes back to how much “St. Ronnie” hated the students who were protesting the war back in the 60s. Not to mention James Buchanan, who according to Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains was horrified by the students he encountered at UCLA, and so he vowed to shift the costs of college onto the individuals. And then when certain people figured out how much money could be made off of student loans…Yikes!
Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is who should pay for college.
What makes you think he would pay for college?
He doesn’t even pay taxes.
As a college student in Texas I benefitted greatly from the low cost tuition at my local community college and local regional university. I was a commuter student all four years. While I missed out on the traditional living on campus experience, I not only graduated debt free, I gained experiences that students who had more traditional college experiences missedout on. My community college classmates were economically, ethnically, and racially diverse. Many of the students in my science and math classes were international students planning to transfer to four year programs in engineering. The regional university I attended was a relatively young institution and attracted many older students. (The average age of students at that time was 30+.). Nothing teaches you the value of getting the most out of your opportunity for an education more than watching the struggles of older students trying to balance jobs, marriages, and children.
I believe that education needs to be affordable, but instead of focusing on who gets into the ‘best’ (whatever that means) colleges, we need to focus on making opportunities for all students more widely available. Affordable means different things to different families. For my family it was the community college close to home. I still remember my community college classmate who was the oldest child of a single mother. He was a gifted musician who dreamed of becoming a high school band director. He worked as a night watchman to help out his family. He eventually had to drop out. I would like to think he eventually finished his degree, but the odds were against him. Even the low tuition couldn’t make up for the disadvantages he faced.
Thanks for posting that.
Many parents have got caught up in the whole “best college” scam and have completely lost sight of the fact that college is largely what you make of it.
You can get a top rate education pretty much anywhere if you put your mind to it.
The real irony is that some of what are touted as the “best” colleges and universities are actually not good places for undergraduates at all, focussing primarily on their graduate students and giving their undergrads short shrift.
I know this from personal experience as an undergrad at an ivy league university.
Unfortunately, everyone from US News (which ranks colleges and universities) to the colleges and universities , to the high school counselors are caught up in the “best” schools game, so it is very hard for parents to see anything else.
Not sure how to change that because there are literally millions of dollars involved.
Autocorrect changed billions to millions.
Apparently it thought it knew better!
I love your post. Let me add this anecdote. My sons are musicians. Musicians often dance to a different drummer, and don’t necessarily do well in book/ pencil academics – or even if they do, have something different in mind. Two of our sons’ bandmates attended our local community college for AA’s in humanities, and ventured from there to Prague, where they promptly found work teaching English to Czech students. Both were able to complete their 4-yr degrees while there, and off-hours formed a band which does well, and continue to support their music habit by teaching English for a serious living-wage now they’ve got BA’s…
When Biden said he didn’t want to forgive debt for people who chose to send their children to Penn for $70,000.00, it demonstrated how out of touch our politicians in Washington are. I didn’t send my children to the Ivey league and we still hold around $65,000.00 in debt. We denied our oldest her preferred college to send her in state and still accrued a combined debt for her and us of $60,000. When my middle child finished her associates degree, the least expensive candidate to complete her bachelors was a well regarded private college. The three public universities she looked at were all over $40,000.00 with no help in spite of the fact my daughter carried over a 3.8 at the community college. The reality is that the investment class has decided that educating others’ children is not their problem, but enhancing their wealth through predatory lending is. Most of our loans are federal loans that will take over 10 years to pay off. The Department of Education is even in on the predatory scam. We’re actually lucky that we can handle this, There are too many stories of those who basically face these debts for decades or see loan default as a debtors prison. Bernie is right, but he is too often dismissed by a political and media culture that thrive due to the burden they have placed on middle class Americans just to get their children educated. The inability to pass tax reforms that simply force the top 1% to pay their taxes along with the false premise that loan forgiveness would become an entitlement for too many Americans, not only threatens our economic well being, but our democracy. Defunding public schools, ending tenure for teachers in K-12 and college, and creating an educational industrial complex that sucks the marrow from opportunity means that the student loan crisis will only get worse for most of us while the few eat their bob-bons at the country club.
When Biden said he didn’t want to forgive debt for people who chose to send their children to Penn for $70,000.00, it demonstrated how out of touch our politicians in Washington are”
It’s a talking point given to them by their side to convince the public, for sure, but I seriously doubt that most of the politicians who say things like that actually believe it.
Our politicians get the benefit of the doubt far too often. It’s more likely that they are actually snickering “suckers” under their breath when they make such claims.
Because suckers is precisely what they take us for.
And they might be right.
Paul Bonner, student loan debt, while being a bad thing, is completely self-inflicted.
Evidence profoundly to the contrary. Yes, there are those who know what they are getting into. However, the aggressive promotion of college loan packages from universities, financial institutions and the federal government has given states the justification to defund public colleges and sustain a pay for play attitude that makes economic mobility a pipe dream. Denying the influence of a sales ethic as it relates to loan packaging, along with the News and World Report schtick that promotes the bias toward elite most selective schools as a way to Nirvana, means you are failing to acknowledge the greed that has put policies in place that has lead to a college debt rate that supersedes even credit card debt. This has established a “debtors prison” that is too real for too many college graduates and dropouts.
Since the 1980s, states have shifted the cost of public universities to students. This is done by cutting state subsidies to public universities.
Nobody forces people to signup for student loans.
We are a better society when more and more people are educated. You want to go backwards to a time about a century ago when college was only for the rich.
Diane Ravitch, regarding my not wanting people to get something they don’t pay for, you clearly missed the point. Wanting anything without paying for it is by definition theft. Wanting anything for free on-demand is also selfish in the sense that it compulsorily obligates other people to pay for it. I was raised to believe in the value of hard work, not raised to believe that the world owed me stuff because I demanded it.
That’s ridiculous. I don’t pay personally for police, fire protection, streets, highways, libraries, parks, etc. I pay taxes, like most people, to make those services free to users. I never called the police. Never had a fire. Use the roads and highways. Don’t mind paying taxes for everyone to enjoy these benefits.
Diane Ravitch, not that I agree with his ideas, however, Bernie Sanders had one good idea with the funding of college with a transaction tax. To clear up a slight misunderstanding, the reason for my disagreeing with tuition-free college is based solely on how it seems that we as a nation may not afford that, the cost of our already massive national debt and the issue of unfunded liabilities. If we had no massive national debt and no unfunded liabilities and government spending was managed more efficiently, I would not mind tuition-free college. Here is something that I would also like to address: Politicians who promise free stuff to us would never agree to work for free. Just ask them.
Has it ever occurred to you that we could improve our nation’s finances if billionaires paid taxes?
No argument there. For the record, I am not entirely against the idea of tuition-free college. I would just prefer to hear arguments for it from economists who crunch numbers than politicians whose only goal is to pander to us.
The cost of attending college has increased at a tremendous rate since my undergraduate years(late 70s through early 80s). Meanwhile, the number courses taught by adjuncts has increased (even as a community college student, I was took a class from an adjunct) and the number of full time tenure track faculty positions has decreased. At the same time administrative positions and salaries seem to have increased. I don’t know what the solution is.
Taking on student loans only provides incentives to keep raising tuition fees.
Instead of asking for handouts, why not vote with your money? Nobody has any right to free stuff on-demand.
Only in the United States do some consider providing an education for students a handout. It’s an investment that has made our economy.
There is no Constitutional right to education at any level.
Every state constitution includes the right to public education.
Diane Ravitch, do you deny the fact that the teacher’s unions are robbing kids of the ability to learn?
This is the last stupid comment of yours that I will post. Teachers unions are not robbing kids of the ability to learn. Name one state that is non-union that has a successful school system. Alabama? Louisiana? Mississippi? The highest performing nations in the world have strong teachers unions.
Hey, before the official war of words between me and Lloyd Lofthouse started over the matter of inheritable wealth started, I had not uttered any rude or insulting comments to him otherwise. You ask for civility and yet you give license to people who agree with you to attack those who don’t agree with you? You are such a hypocrite!
Ragnar,
You repost the same ideas again and again. You don’t want anyone to get anything they didn’t pay for. You don’t support free college. That’s all you contribute. If you have nothing more to say, that’s it. You don’t persuade people by constant repetition.
Every state constitution includes a right to public education.
There should be!
Ragnarsbut is obsessed by the idea that anyone gets something without paying for it. If he continues in this repetitive line, he will leave us.
Recently I was researching the decline of state support of higher education. The swiftest decline was in the early 1980’s (though the decline has continued ever since, and took an extra dive after the ’07-’08 recession). Sources claim it started with the Reagan admin cutting fed aid [Pell grants et al] to the bone, then states followed suit.
My own particular anecdote: my much-younger sis was in college then. Between ’80 and ’83 [freshman to sr year] her tuition jumped 250%. That wasn’t a state college, it was a small private Catholic college in VA, but if private colleges were anything like the private hisch I taught at in the ‘70’s, they too got state aid, were operated on a shoestring, and any drop in govt aid would be immediately reflected in higher tuition. Or, it could have been simply the typical move of small private colleges who keep their tuition competitive with state schools, responding to market change.
So it appears that states immediately followed fed example, and the change rippled through tertiary ed like a fall of dominoes.
Why? Was it “libertarianism”? Certainly the Reagan admin was riddled with those types (tho they called themselves ‘neo-conservatives). I have a strong suspicion it was more likely a reaction to the shrinking of the national pie caused by the collision of info tech [acceleration of automation] and global trade, whose mfg decline hit the US in late-’70’s. When confronted with this leviathan, our govt took no pulse, convened no enlightened consultants with an eye to adjustments required for the public good. Bringing back laissez-faire capitalism, via union-busting + dereg of financial sector– at that particular juncture—amounted to sending all assets to the top thus granting $cloutiest ability to grab biggest pieces of the shrinking pie. A “sauve qui peut” moment.
Bolstering my thesis it wasn’t “libertarianism”: this process actually started a couple of years prior, under Carter.
Isn’t the real cost of college the room and board and other living expenses, which can be 3 times as much as the low-tuition at public colleges. The tuition cost of going to a CUNY is still relatively low. But having your other expenses paid as a full time student is very high.
Should every student who attends a public university get free tuition PLUS be given an additional $15,000/year to cover their living expenses? Or maybe $20,000/year?
Has this been discussed?
I don’t know where you’re getting room/ board at 3x a ‘low’ tuition amount. Maybe that’s true for SUNY schools? I just googled 6 of the NJ public colleges. Tuition/ fees and room/board at all were roughly equivalent; the total averaged just under $30k/yr.
This is quite a jump from when my three sons attended music-tech programs at small metro-area private colleges between 2005-2014 [LI, Westchester, Bloomfield NJ]. Those schools were priced then at roughly the same as NY-NJ public colleges, with room/board about 1/2 the tuition/fees – total was then $20k/yr.
Tuition at Brooklyn College, one of the CUNYs, is only around $7,000 a year.
Tuition and fees at the SUNY flagship, Binghamton, are just over $10,000.
But the cost of attendance is $28,000.
It is much too expensive to attend college, but just because a family gets “free tuition” at a CUNY or SUNY does not make it affordable.
That’s why I am surprised that there isn’t a discussion about giving students $15 – 20,000/year grants for living expenses. They would use that to pay for dorm/dining hall, off campus apartment, or give it to their parents to subsidize the expenses of having another person living at home and their transportation to get to the university.
Good info, thanks. Yikes.
I browsed briefly re: the many Euro countries whose public colleges are tuition-free (and there are many public colleges to choose from). Students do have to pay room and board, but that is sometimes subsidized. E.g. in Norway, a more expensive Euro country, students are guaranteed a room in low-cost student housing which runs about $200 per month. On the other hand, college students in Germany spend about $1000/month including all living expenses.
If my kids were college age today I’d sure be looking at those European colleges. Germany especially: one of the few whose public institutions are free tuition for non-EU students as well– AND they offer many programs in English! All to be had for living expenses only, which adds up to 1/3 of your yrly tuition/rm/bd at NYS or NJ public colleges.
Michael Broccum has always seemed like a pretty nice guy, and I assume he is, but how the heck does a blatant anti-Semitic comment like that raise only one objection here? Wow.
About the Jewish remark. Most of my friends are Jewish. It was they who informed me that Wiley was married to a white Jewish man, and they did so with disdain towards Wiley for what they felt was an avoidance of her privileged background during this campaign.
I’ll just say It did come off jarring, and I don’t think “white, Jewish man” should be a way of describing privilege. I can only speak for myself.
I agree. I merely repeated what my friends said.
Being married to a whiteJewish man is not necessarily a sign of privilege.
I agree with FLERP!
Brocoum didn’t describe Wiley’s partner as white and privileged, he described him as JEWISH and privileged.
It is entirely irrelevant if one of Michael’s Jewish best friends noted that Wiley’s partner was Jewish. So what?
Michael used that term in the context of why we should not trust Wiley, because he believes being Jewish makes the husband more suspect.
Wow. You are either trying to inflame by lying about what I said or are simply wrong. If you care to read what I posted. I did not say wealthy Jewish man. I did say what my Jewish friends said that he is a wealthy white Jewish man.
^^^And Michael Brocoum is wrong to imply that his Jewish friends felt that there was something far more suspect about Maya Wiley being married to a privileged Jewish man than a privileged Christian man.
Boy you have a good imagination. It has nothing to do with Jewish v. Christian and everything to do with wealthy individuals buying power. As reported in The NY Times the wealthiest avoid taxes and wind up paying sometimes zero and other times paying less than one percent of their income. Meanwhile the tax burdens are pushed to the less wealthy and government services are further reduced, except “of course” for the military. During the 50’s through the 70’s the maximum marginal tax rate was about 92%. The effective tax rate was about 47% for the wealthiest. The government was able to build the highway system, create the GI Bill which built veterans hospitals and provided funds for veterans to go to school, help states provide free college for qualified students in public colleges and so on. During the Iraq war when the tax rates were much lower the Bush administration actually cut taxes further despite the extra costs incurred for the war!
Today the wealthy control our government and use cultural beliefs to divide and conquer, and they are succeeding. We may even lose our democracy! How about all the “parent” groups funded by the billionaires to destroy public education? We are in a dangerous place so the very last thing I want is to vote for people with extreme wealth to buy more power. Maya Wiley and Tali Weinstein fall in that category. Tali Weinstein’s husband is a hedge fund operator. From everything I read about hedge funds they have done enormous damage to the society at large, destroying successful companies and cause workers to lose jobs, all for short term profits.
Finally, neither my Jewish friends nor myself stated or implied that there was something more suspect about being married to a Jewish person rather than a Christian. I believe that you are projecting here.
Michael Brocoum posted:
“I am disturbed that Dianne Ravitch supports Maya Wiley. Maya Wiley is married to a very wealthy Jewish white male, but you would never know that from her campaign ads.”
I repeat, the religion of the wealthy person is irrelevant, but you noted it. Would it have been okay if she was married to a “very wealthy Muslim white male”? Is it that you equate Jewish with “privileged”?
Some people note that Bernie Sanders is a socialist. Some other people note that he is a “Jewish socialist”, and unless they are Jews themselves, that term is generally used by people who do not like socialists and do not like Jews.
That is your imagination about equating Jewish with wealth. Again I merely repeated what my Jewish friends stated, nothing more or less. This post was about Maya Wiley, Tali Weinstein, money, and power, period. I am a huge Sanders & Warren supporter. They expose the machinations of the wealthy and problems caused from such concentration of wealth and income. Creating some hypothetical about Muslims would be no different if I had Muslim friends who made similar statements that later I repeated about Muslims. People like Wiley hope voters will not notice that their respective lifestyles have nothing in common. The rich have more power than ever in recent times and they are not going to give it up willingly. In fact they want more power and wealth hence the runs for political office.
You sound like a nice man. Everyone has unconscious biases. I used to watch Billy Crystal doing his Sammy Davis Jr. impersonation and not think there was anything wrong with it.
There is something wrong with you gratuitously identifying any person as “Jewish” in the context in which you did. Whether or not your friends did so is irrelevant.
It’s okay to just say that you didn’t think about how that sounded and perhaps you might have some unconscious biases. But it’s not okay, in my view, to cite Jewish friends who said it to justify it.
But I doubt you would have written “Wiley was married to a white Christian man”.
Wiley’s husband also worked for Open Society Institute. Do you have some reason to believe that her husband’s political beliefs and influence on Maya Wiley are suspect, other than his religion? His “privileged background”? Talk about cancel culture!
Very confused by your response. I have no concern that his religion will influence Wiley. I have big concerns that wealthy people are gaining more and more control of our politics. I have stated that innumerable times on this blog long before this thread.
Something has to be done. We can’t keep on going like this. No matter what is decided, someone is going to feel gypped. It can’t be helped, but you need to start somewhere.
Diane Ravitch, if we cut spending across-the-board by 50%, including a reduction in the salaries of politicians whose paychecks are subsidized with our tax dollars, I would not mind redirecting that money to help fund college-free tuition. Not that I agree with his wealth redistribution schemes, however, Bernie Sanders had a good idea regarding funding colleges with a transaction tax.
Will you give up your Social Security and Medicare?
Not at all. Why? Because I contributed to those systems.
Diane Ravitch, we spend a significant amount of money on education. What has that done? Not anything good for the students. Want to fix the problem? Get rid of the power of teacher’s unions and get the federal government out of education altogether.
Diane Ravitch, people who want free stuff on-demand are the end result of the parent(s) never telling the kid(s) the parents may have no. It is also very selfish and egotistical to demand that people whom one is unrelated to pay for other people’s pursuits of higher education.
College is useful for many things, which I will concede. Having said that, it is a delusion to believe that college is the best path in order to develop skills to innovate.
If people concentrated on their college fund more than you do video games or how they look then they would be more prepared to pay for college when they graduate high school and then they don’t have to live off other people’s money.
It’s not anyone’s responsibility to put other people’s kids through college whom they have no biological relationship to. Nobody is entitled to free stuff on-demand, period. Regarding my not wanting people to get anything that they don’t pay for, wanting anything without paying for it or forcing other people to pick up the tab is theft. I am also not interested in my tax dollars subsidizing people who turn welfare into a career opportunity where they get money for doing nothing because they decided to use college as license to party instead of learning useful stuff.
Due to a complicated medical situation, something not of my making, college is not in my future. Even if it was, I would rather bust my butt to be able to go or get financial assistance from family members than freeload and mooch off of the taxpayers in order to go.
The idea that a college education will make one a success story is the biggest bunch of b.s. out there. If it was, that should cause Mark Zuckerberg a colossal failure in life. He invented the social media outlet Facebook and he did it without a college degree.
Politicians who talk about free stuff will never work without a paycheck. Just ask them. They make millions of dollars and what do they do to make that money? Tax and regulate us to death and for what? In order to buy the votes of the uneducated and the votes of people who are on welfare.
When you get a college loan you need to be responsible for that loan or don’t go to that college. You have no right to pick other people’s pockets to pay for it.
There already is free college via the GI Bill. Veterans are more deserving of a free college education than a bunch of lazy deadbeats who only want college to be free because they can’t afford it.
Diane Ravitch, the idea of college being tuition-free would not be an issue if we did not have a $20, 000, 000, 000, 000.00+ level of national debt. I don’t necessarily have any objection to college being low cost, however, when I hear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talk about having residual student loan debt, I can only roll my eyes with disdain. I have no objection to technical/trade schools being low cost, even free, seeing as those have a value added benefit to the people who pursue those and increasing their chances at employment opportunities. The “I can’t afford it and should be able to attend college for free” thinking is indicative of a victim mentality. Unless and until these politicians who talk about college being tuition-free are either willing to contribute half of their salaries to cover the costs of people who do want to attend or are willing to work for free themselves, they should just shut up. If there are many politicians who don’t want corporations to bribe politicians to make laws favorable to said corporations, that same logic should apply to all other potential areas for bribery as a concern.
A legitimate argument for college being tuition-free is that people having no student loan debt can be more productive in society after they graduate. Their being more productive can help them earn more money and then they can also pay for the future generations to go to college.
Our debt is triple that of the next industrialized country because 50% of our defense budget goes to the coffers of defense contractors and we provide massive tax subsidies to wealthy people and corporations that don’t need them. We have the largest economy in the world that far outstrips our international competitors who all provide education and health care. Yes, their taxes are higher, but all of them have better health outcomes, greater life expectancy, and most have a better quality of life by every measure. The issue of government spending in this country isn’t what we can afford, but a system that allows wealthy individuals and corporations unfettered access to government officials who are in many ways bought and paid for. If we got our priorities straight in regard to supporting our citizenry, we would be collectively far more prosperous and less dependent on government intervention. Making taxes and debt the boogie man that keeps us from taking care of the country simply shows how irresponsible we are.
Diane Ravitch, countries like Finland may very likely afford to pay for tuition-free college. I would not be surprised if their national debt is less than that of the USA. What I have a hard time with is when politicians who have residual student loan debt complain about it and play the victim. If you are opposed to things like bribery and yet have no issue with politicians trying to bribe people with student loan debt for votes, there is a significant inconsistency there.
Diane Ravitch, each and every time I look into the eyes of politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and all of these other people who talk about making college tuition-free by legislative dictate, I can tell that they have absolutely no plans to deliver. They just sales pitch it as an empty campaign slogan. In case you have not read the U.S. Constitution recently, there is nothing in it that gives politicians the authority to enact all of these fantasy land promises of free college and free health care. People who want college to be free because they can’t afford it are just looking for handouts.
Greg Hackley,
There is nothing in the Constitution about airplanes or highways or television or drugs or maternal health or education or social security or Medicare or 90% of what the federal government does.
Did you know that?
Diane Ravitch, yes, I do. Per the 10th Amendment, those should be handled at the state level. Why not let each state decide within its own borders the issue of tuition-free college and student loan debt policies? If you object to bribery and yet think that politicians bribing people with student loan debts for votes is acceptable, can you not see the fact that there is a disconnect there? All I have to do is look into the eyes of politicians who offer to make these promises and see that they are not sincere.
Community colleges used to be free. So was the City University of New York, and other local and state universities. Leaders understood that money invested in education would benefit society.
Thus we have states with Democratic legislatures that are responsible for 70% of our countries GDP that are at least making reasonable attempts to educate and produce productive citizens. While Republican states such as Alabama basically put the entire burden of higher education on individuals while wallowing in poverty and competing for the worst quality of life metrics with most of the rest of the Southeast. It is because of this that Republican states on the whole are far more dependent of Federal largess (According to “MoneyGeek” 7 of the ten most dependent states are Republican{https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/}). So if simply returning education to the states occurs, those in the South who are wealthy will be out of luck and continue the level of dependence we see now..
Diane Ravitch, the whole “I can’t afford to go to college and should be able to go for free” argument is a bad argument for college being free. A better argument would be that making college tuition-free would be better for the economy because people who are not saddled with debt could be more productive and they could help fund the endeavor for future generations.
Surprise, I agree with you! Saddling millions of people with college debt is bad for the economy. The “happiest country in the world” is Finland, where no one pays to go to college or graduate school. The best investment in the future is an investment in education.
Diane Ravitch, tuition-free college seems like a good idea in theory. The issue is what aspects of higher education should be invested in. Personally, I think medical school, law school and technical schools should be taxpayer-funded as there is value produced from each of them.
Thomas Pareses,
If your question about who should pay the cost of higher education can vest be answered by looking at other societies. In many advanced economies, education is considered a human right, not a consumer good. Society benefits by having many well-educated people.
In Finland, all formal education is tuition-free. They believe that education is a human right, and it’s wrong to charge people for exercising a human right. The Finns also believe that educating people is good for society. By supplying tuition-free education, including college and graduate schools, society is investing in its future.
Yes! Education is an investment that brings more revenue to the government and reduces individual dependence on government services.
Diane Ravitch, I am sure that there are countries that provide tuition-free college and who place a great value on having an educated society. The reason I know that it won’t happen in the USA anytime soon is due to the fact that politicians who talk like that are only interested in their own power. Most recently, I watched a video where Elizabeth Warren was asked by a guy if he would get money back that he paid in tuition fees on behalf of his daughter. She basically laughed in his face and said that it would not happen. Either she really believes what she says or she is as much of a liar as many of these politicians who make empty promises are. Making promises that will never be kept or cannot be fulfilled makes the person doing it a liar.