Why Bernie's plan for Free College and make Wall St. pay won't work.
1. Why Bernie’s plan to make Wall St pay for his Free College would not work. Bernie’s plan includes operating costs but not the costs of construction and building maintenance costs. But Bernie’s estimates are based on the status quo. If college suddenly became free in every state, the number of people who chose to attend would not be limited to just the status quo. You would have in addition to the millennial, those who currently do not choose to go to college because they can’t afford it. You ‘d then have in addition;
(1) millennials;
(2) the men and women in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even their 60s who didn't go to college ever;
(3) those who went to college and have been laid off;
(4) those who may wish or need to retrain for a new career,
(5) the unemployed at any age. Even though the tuition may be free, unemployed people who have exhausted their Unemployment Insurance would still need money to pay for their day to day living expenses like food, shelter,clothing, and car expense so why not go back to school and somehow there would be a program that pays for these expenses etc.,
(6) the girlfriend of the boyfriend who previously had no intentions of going to college when it wasn’t free, or vice versa.
(7) People who are on welfare and may be required to go to school to learn a trade in order to maintain their welfare benefits (and as with the unemployed, they would need money for school expenses like books, fees, etc.
(8) the bored retiree who decides to go to college and take up Art Studies at age 65
My guess is that college became Free tomorrow in all 50 states, the current enrollment would triple at least for the reasons cited above.
Also, whenever anything is Free, the quality is reduced. Look at public education in general in the United States. California always had the very best low cost Community Colleges (two year colleges which offer the lower divisions courses which prepared a student to transfer to a 4 year school for their upper division courses). They also offered trade courses in fields like computer programming, interior design, and plumbing, heating and air conditioning, etc. Anyone who graduated high school could attend.
Over the past 2 decades, our high quality Community College now do two things: 1) all incoming freshmen are tested in Reading, Math, and Writing skills. Half of those tested require remedial Reading, Math, and Writing classes. But instead of sending them back to High School, or Adult night school which is offered at a number of schools in the evening at a much lower cost, they now take up space at the local Community Colleges being taught, the remedial Reading, Math and Writing Skills that they should have learned in High School.
These kids also qualify for Financial Aid even though the cost of fees/tuition at the Community College is really low. However, they still can qualify for Financial Aid for room, board and other expenses, so with this money either generally move out of their parents home and move in with their boyfriend/girlfriend or just their friend. After all the Financial Aid is there for the taking.
Because everyone gets accepted, kids drop out frequently during the semester because they got a part time job at the mall and now don’t want to get up that early, or they stayed up too late partying or whatever and don’t make it to school. The classes by mid semester have half the number of enrollees attending classes midway through the semester than they had at the beginning. They then, should they be that ambitious and really need that class, re-enroll in the same class the next semester. They can usually drop a class up until the end of the semester without it impacting on their GPA, so many of those who skip class often enough choose this route.
So our once great Community Colleges are now glorified high schools. We keep building more and our Property Tax rates are through the roof.
2. My other concern would be, who would decide to get in. On day one of the Free College, my guess would be as I stated above, we would need 3 times as many classroom seats as we currently have. Would there be waiting lists? Would people be accepted based on who had the highest test scores in our 4 year state colleges and universities. What would be the cutoff scores and who decides when there are more applicants than there are slots available.
We still have some of the very Best Public universities (UCLA, UC Berkley, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, etc) and they used to have an Affirmative Action program which allowed for acceptance consideration on the basis of race in order to allow for diversity of the student population, but they cut that out many years ago. So now our top schools are about 90% white and foreign with the remaining slots usually going to student athletes and minorities if they're lucky.
Mostly white and foreign because the white kids can usually increase their GPAs due to taking Advanced Placement Classes which are offered mostly in the more exclusive communities and school districts which give those kids who chose to take them a leg up. But the truth is that if those schools didn’t limit the number of foreign students accepted, those schools would be entirely foreign students for a couple of reasons. 1) The foreign students score higher on their High School studies and college entrance exams than the white kids do, and 2) they pay out of state tuition rates (even though they are from out of the country) which is much higher than the native born kids and the colleges like getting that money.
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