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.
The continuing myth of free college
The primary problem is that tuition costs at public colleges are mostly controlled by the states and are a direct result of how much money lawmakers dedicate to higher education. Any free tuition plan requires states to pitch in, and we know how well that has worked with Obamacare.
.. Average public college tuition varies by more than 3 to 1 among the states, according to Carey, from less than $5,000 in Wyoming to more than $15,000 in New Hampshire. The range of public investment is even larger, from $2,591 per student in New Hampshire to $14,412 in Alaska.
.. In 1987, U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett suggested that increases in federal financial aid enabled colleges and universities to raise their prices.
.. As Andrew Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute has written, capping tuition at zero “limits college spending to whatever the public is willing to invest. But it does not change the cost of college.”
.. public institutions that have been limited by their state legislatures in raising tuition have turned to charging “fees” to students in an effort to raise money. Student fees that cover everything from athletics to technology are hidden tuition increases that won’t be covered by any free tuition plan.