It’s not as if free tuition for the middle class was a dream that has been burning in the governor’s heart since he was growing up in middle-class Queens. It was, as he said on Wednesday, a bolt of insight from watching the presidential race.
This was not the product of extensive hearings or long study; there was no sense that it emerged because public-policy or higher-education experts
.. let’s examine what is keeping young New Yorkers out of college, and figure out how to get them in and keep them there.
.. It is not for part-time students, a huge portion of the community-college population.
.. It’s not for poor families
.. even though the cost of room and board and books is what’s keeping many poor students out of college, the Excelsior Scholarship covers none of that.
.. Mr. Cuomo is now free to let others sort out the perplexing details while he moves on.
.. it seemed to him that Mr. Cuomo had “hastily reverse-engineered” the process to get the headline he wanted, which sounds about right.
The Cuomo College Fiasco
He could have spent more to help students become academically ready for college, which is the biggest barrier to graduation.
.. But in 2016 Bernie Sanders made a big splash on the campaign trail with a plan to make college “free.”
.. If he runs for president, this will be an outstanding talking point. Unfortunately, the law will hurt actual New Yorkers.
.. First, the law is regressive. It does nothing to help students from families earning less than $50,000 a year. Their tuition is already covered by other programs. But it does pay for tuition for New Yorkers who make double the state’s median income. The higher up the income scale you go, until the ceiling, the more you benefit.
.. Second, it doesn’t make a dent in reducing the nontuition fees, like living expenses, textbooks and travel, which for many students are far more onerous than tuition.
Third, it doesn’t cover students who don’t go to school full time and don’t complete in four years. In 2017 this is the vast, vast majority of all students, especially poorer students.