{"id":15402,"date":"2019-09-18T10:25:47","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T16:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=15402"},"modified":"2019-09-18T10:25:47","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T16:25:47","slug":"oh-heck-lets-criticize-free-college-in-detail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2019\/09\/oh-heck-lets-criticize-free-college-in-detail.html","title":{"rendered":"Oh, heck, let’s criticize “free college” in detail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders is making promises.<\/p>\n

Yes, sure, all the Democratic presidential candidates are chock full of promises, and it\u2019s a fair question at this point which candidate has made the most extensive promises, but let\u2019s talk about the specifics of Bernie\u2019s free college proposal, because his website\u2019s promises have some actual supporting detail in the form of the <\/span>the College for All Act of 2019<\/a> and well, his proposals make no sense.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with this:\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to object to the basic premise that tertiary education should be free, or at least considerably less expensive than it is now, in something like the European model (though in reality, there is not one single approach that all European countries take, even if there are broad similarities).\u00a0 For the purposes of this article, I\u2019m not going to argue that point because my objective is really more to think about whether his proposal even works or has the fundamental fairness that he claims it does.<\/p>\n

And, no, I don\u2019t think that his proposal works but my objective is to get my brain in gear sufficiently well to discuss why.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with his website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When Bernie is in the White House, he will:<\/p>\n

Pass the College for All Act to provide at least $48 billion per year to eliminate tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities, tribal colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs.<\/p>\n

Cancel All Existing Student Debt<\/p>\n

Make College Debt-Free for All<\/p>\n

Provide $1.3 billion to private, nonprofit HBCUs and MSIs every year to eliminate or significantly reduce tuition and fees for low-income students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

Tax Wall Street Gambling to Cancel All Student Debt and Pay for College for All<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the last of these by taxing stock trades at 0.5%, meant to punish the rich but, of course, impacting every American with a 401(k) and especially those with target-date provisions which rebalance the portfolios, unless Sanders were to create some sort of loophole.<\/p>\n

But would this work?<\/p>\n

His debt cancellation proposal is straightforward, as far as that part of the whole endeavor goes.\u00a0 All federal student loans are cancelled.\u00a0 All private sector student loans are bought by the government, then cancelled.\u00a0 All parent loans are likewise cancelled.<\/p>\n

Is this equitable?\u00a0 Certainly, a young adult who ate ramen and took on extra shifts to pay off that debt or to avoid it in the first place, wouldn\u2019t think so.\u00a0 Nor would a family who diligently saved for their kids\u2019 college rather than taking trips to Disneyland.\u00a0 Does the Sanders team respond, like everyone\u2019s fathers\u2019 would, \u201cso what? life isn\u2019t fair\u201d or do they object to the very premise that some people had the ability to save and chose not to, and operate on the assumption that surely, all those poor folks deep in debt did their best to avoid it as well, and just couldn\u2019t help it?<\/p>\n

But how would the \u201cfree college\u201d work?<\/p>\n

Despite the claim to promise \u201cdebt free\u201d college, getting into the weeds of his proposal, that\u2019s not actually the case \u2014 and he even promises that future student loans, because they will continue to exist, will have super-low interest rates (1.88%). \u00a0 (Why 1.88%?\u00a0 No idea \u2014 it\u2019s not stated as being tied to any particular variable rate that happens to be 1.88%.\u00a0 It\u2019s just 1.88%.)<\/p>\n

But his entire structure is this:<\/p>\n

The federal government gives states grants equal to 67% of the amount of money needed to eliminate tuition and fees for undergraduate students at their public colleges and universities, in exchange for those states contributing the remaining 33%.\u00a0 In addition, there\u2019s a dollar for dollar match on additional state spending to improve student instruction.<\/p>\n

But then the text of the bill starts talking about the sort of spending that schools cannot get a 50:50 match on:\u00a0 building new stadiums, hiring administrators, etc.\u00a0 Yet at the same time, each year, the school determines the amount of money it needs to \u201celiminate tuition and required fees\u201d and the feds fund 2\/3s of this sum; how this is supposed to work is not at all clear to me except, perhaps, for the requirement that states kick in 1\/3 the cost being intended to keep them from inflating costs.\u00a0 Oh, and in addition, schools at the moment already have programs in which they charge tuition that exceeds the true cost of instruction in order to reallocate some of that money into \u201cinstitutional aid\u201d \u2014 would those grants be based on the \u201csticker price,\u201d giving universities a surplus, or on their receipts net of this aid\/scholarships?<\/p>\n

And schools are subject to all manner of requirements to be eligible for the grants; most significantly, 75% of their instruction (not defined) must be by tenured or tenure-track professors.<\/p>\n

There are some other elements which just don\u2019t make sense; in particular, there\u2019s a whole section about tuition for out-of-state students that I can\u2019t figure out and presume is not carefully drafted.\u00a0 And there\u2019s nothing at all about international students, who are a profit center at many universities now; if the grants are meant to cover the entire cost of tuition, does that include everyone?<\/p>\n

But all this aside \u2014 room and board isn\u2019t covered except in the form of a requirement that schools cover the \u201cremaining need\u201d for Pell Grant-eligible students. (With what money?\u00a0 More state funds required?\u00a0 Are schools allowed to cost-shift using tuition?)\u00a0 And in an era in which increasing numbers of students attend grad school out of a reality or a perception that it\u2019s necessary, the proposal makes no provision for grad school, or does it attempt to innovate to reduce its perceived or real need.<\/p>\n

And finally, other than subsidies for certain universities serving minority students, the proposal includes no provision for private universities, which over 1\/4 of American college students attend<\/a> and which are responsible for a disproportionate share of student debt.\u00a0 Would the adoption of a program such as Sanders\u2019, raising the relative cost of private colleges, shift more students to public colleges?\u00a0 Would they be able to handle the increased demand?\u00a0 Or would students continue to believe private collages offered them advantages they couldn\u2019t pass up, even at the cost of high debt levels?<\/p>\n

None of this works.<\/p>\n

And, yes, I get that this isn\u2019t really intended to \u201cwork\u201d \u2013 that this is legislation that\u2019s meant to express goals and ideals rather than be passed as-is.\u00a0 But even disregarding that:\u00a0 Sanders and others imagine that we should just \u201cbe like Europe\u201d but Sanders can\u2019t create a replica of the European system, however much he\u2019d like to.<\/p>\n

Even disregarding the fact that, generally speaking, European universities require entrance exams, offer much less in the way of support services, athletics, etc.,, and in general are intended for a much smaller slice of the population than in the US, and even disregarding the issue of private schools, the whole concept of 2\/3 \u2013 1\/3 grants with preconditions just doesn\u2019t make sense and points to the fact that the American federalist system means that, if a unit of government is equipped to make determinations about the extent to which public universities should be free or charge tuition, it should be that unit of government which sponsors those in the first place \u2014 the states (or, for community colleges, the county or Community College District or other local or regional entity if that\u2019s how it works in a given state).\u00a0 They are the ones who can make an appropriation for the universities within their state and then, using their oversight powers, set requirements about tuition and status of instructors and share of students who are in- or out-of-state and anything else they want to regulate\/meddle in (depending on your perspective) and if a university comes back and says, \u201cthat\u2019s preposterous, we can\u2019t meet those conditions without X or Y unintended consequence,\u201d then they negotiate.<\/p>\n

And the various states have varying policies about the degree to which they fund their universities, and the degree to which they place other conditions on them.\u00a0 In some states, they all operate independently; in other states (New York, California, Wisconsin) they are part of systems in name or in fact.\u00a0 And their in-state tuition levels vary widely as it is, something that I learned when my oldest was looking at colleges and I was trying to guide him. (Which is, incidentally, another bit of unfairness with Sanders\u2019 and similar proposals:\u00a0 a state which had always heavily subsidized in-state tuition gets less money from the feds than a state like Illinois with much lower subsidies.)<\/p>\n

\u201cFree college\u201d or boosts in levels of state aid is a fine plan for a state to undertake.\u00a0 But at the federal level, this grant-based approach doesn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0 And boosts in student aid have failed to control costs because they\u2019ve been paired with conventional wisdom such as \u201ceveryone must go to college\u201d and \u201ceveryone should go to the most prestigious college they can gain admission to\u201d (as defined by price tag) and \u201cthe experience of \u2018going away to college\u2019 is an important part of growing up that makes the added cost worth every penny\u201d \u2014 not to mention the periodic reports that employers demand BAs for jobs which don\u2019t require them, and MAs for jobs which should be appropriate for a college grad with additional on-the-job training, more or less just because they can, because of the surplus of college grads relative to jobs for which a degree is truly a meaningful qualification for the job.<\/p>\n

And now, having said all that, here\u2019s my summary of the text of the College for All Act of 2019<\/a> itself.<\/p>\n

**************<\/p>\n

The legislation is in the form of an amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965, so it starts with Section 901, which authorizes, in subsection (b), grants \u201cto enable the States and eligible Indian entities to eliminate tuition and required fees for all eligible students at community colleges, public 4-year institutions of higher education in the State, or Tribal Colleges and Universities of the eligible Indian entity, where \u201celigible\u201d students are previously defined as those not already having a baccalaureate degree.<\/p>\n

Section 901(b)(2) specifies that each States or eligible Indian entity \u201cshall provide a non-Federal share of funds for an award year from non-Federal sources in an amount that is equal to 33 percent of the amount required to eliminate tuition and fees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider that each state currently subsidizes public education at different levels.\u00a0 Does a state already funding half the cost of tuition get a federal grant of 2\/3 times the remaining 50%, and a state funding only one quarter, get a grant of 2\/3 times the remaining 75%?\u00a0 Would more heavily-subsidizing states stand for this?<\/em><\/p>\n

There are alternate provisions for Tribal Colleges \u2014 honestly, I\u2019ll just skip the Tribal College provisions from here on out.<\/p>\n

Anyway, 901(c) states that the award money for the first year is 67% of whatever revenue the community college\/university students paid in as tuition in the prior year.\u00a0 Stray thought:\u00a0 do international students count, too? \u00a0<\/em>There are separate rules for states who don\u2019t participate from the beginning of the program onwards. In subsequent years, that amount is increased by increases in student enrollment and \u201cthe amount of additional expenditures per full-time equivalent student . . . that will be necessary to eliminate tuition and required fees for each student.\u201d\u00a0 This seems to say that schools can just raise their expenses however much they want, knowing that they have to cover 1\/3 the additional amount and the feds cover the remaining 2\/3.\u00a0 Will legislators see the need to cover 1\/3 as something to compel them to keep expenses down, or will they say, \u201cit\u2019s a bargain because we only pay 1\/3\u201d? \u00a0<\/em>Oh, and the school uses \u201cprojected\u201d enrollment which the feds can call into question if it\u2019s more than 25%, and it\u2019s ultimately adjusted to reflect actual numbers.<\/p>\n

There is also the possibility of additional money at a dollar-for-dollar match, for funds \u201ctowards reducing the cost of attendance and improving instruction\u201d \u2014 the first of these might include, I imagine, subsidizing room and board; the second of these is not clear, given that the provisions already state that whatever the state deems as additional expenses is covered.\u00a0 A later section lists possible items in the category of \u201cimproving instruction\u201d and these include professional development for faculty and tutoring for students.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing that what\u2019s implied is that the year-over-year grant increase is meant to be based on \u201ckeeping all the elements of the university\u2019s general functioning the same,\u201d and that the dollar-for-dollar money is meant for extras in the year of implementation.\u00a0 But this dollar-for-dollar money cannot be used for \u201cthe construction of a nonacademic facility, such as an athletic facility or stadium\u201d or \u201cfor merit-based student financial aid\u201d or \u201cto pay the salaries or benefits of school administrators\u201d or several other categories \u2014 which leaves me rather stumped as to what Sanders has in mind here.\u00a0 Is the state supposed to pay for these items out of a wholly separate pot of state money?\u00a0 Are existing merit aid programs that had previously been covered by tuition acceptable or is the share of tuition that had been funding these programs required to be paid for by the state?\u00a0 And what about the provision that administrators\u2019 compensation cannot be covered? Given that they think of themselves as dedicated to improving student outcomes and\/or essential to the operation of the university, why are they treated differently?<\/p>\n

Oh, well.<\/p>\n

Then there are some eligibility requirements:<\/p>\n

States must maintain spending on instruction at the same per-student level as at the initial implementation of the program.\u00a0 So I guess any innovations that reduce instructional cost are ruled out \u2014 though that would have been unlikely anyway, and there\u2019s still the question of how it increases relative to inflation.<\/p>\n

States must shift, within 5 years, to a tenure\/tenure-track instructional model, with 75% of instruction (not defined \u2013 number of courses?\u00a0 Adjusted for numbers of students per course?) by tenured or tenure-track faculty.\u00a0 Look, I\u2019m not a big fan of the adjunct per-course model, but, especially at the community college level, there is no reason to preserve the tenure model; full-time, regular, benefits-eligible employment should be just fine without the promise of lifetime employment.<\/em><\/p>\n

States must meet 100% of the remaining \u201cneed\u201d of maximum-Pell Grant-eligible students (that is, their room and board costs).<\/p>\n

All universities must keep enrollment at current levels, except to the extent that it\u2019s beyond their control.<\/p>\n

States must \u201cprovide an assurance that public institutions of higher education in the State . . . will not charge out-of-state students an amount that exceeds the marginal cost of attending institutions of higher education in the State.\u201d\u00a0 I admit I don\u2019t understand what this means given that the initial provisions are that all tuition is to be covered by the grants and money by the state.\u00a0 Maybe there was a drafting error here since this is legislation that isn\u2019t expected to be passed in this form, but I can\u2019t really guess what this would be. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

States must promise that they will not overcharge non-eligible in-State students \u2014 that is, the rate of increase for their tuition will not exceed the rate of increase in the hypothetical tuition that\u2019s covered by the grants and state funds.\u00a0 I think \u201cnon-eligible\u201d means graduate students or maybe students going for a second degree.<\/em><\/p>\n

Anyway, that\u2019s the first half of Sanders\u2019 legislation.<\/p>\n

The second half, section 902, has to do with grant money for private colleges which meet definitions for serving Hispanics, Blacks, Alaskan-Natives, Native-Hawaiians, Asian Americans, and which has 35% or more low-income students \u2014 and here, too, there are grants to eliminate tuition, and it\u2019s not entirely clear how it\u2019s meant to work except that there is a specific sum of money appropriated here, $1.34 billion in 2020, but with the vague \u201csuch sums as may be necessary\u201d for subsequent years.<\/p>\n

And then there are more provisions:<\/p>\n

Student loan rates are limited to 1.88%.<\/p>\n

Oh, and then nearly at the bottom is Title IV:\u00a0 \u201cStudent Debt Cancellation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The outstanding balance on all Federal student loans is to be forgiven not later than 180 days after the passage of the bill, including parental loans and consolidated loans.\u00a0 Also, any payments made by borrowers between the date of the enactment and the date of official loan forgiveness is to be refunded.<\/p>\n

And the federal government will purchase all private student loans, and then forgive the balance.<\/p>\n

And finally:\u00a0 well, missing from this entirely are the promised pay-fors as described on the Sanders website.<\/p>\n

And there you have it:\u00a0 free!<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0\u201cLibrePlanet 2014 27\u201d by Lionel Allorge \u2013 Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons \u2013 http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:LibrePlanet_2014_27.jpg#mediaviewer\/File:LibrePlanet_2014_27.jpg<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernie Sanders is making promises. Yes, sure, all the Democratic presidential candidates are chock full of promises, and it\u2019s a fair question at this point which candidate has made the most extensive promises, but let\u2019s talk about the specifics of Bernie\u2019s free college proposal, because his website\u2019s promises have some actual supporting detail in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1302,100],"class_list":["post-15402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-tuition","tag-universities"],"yoast_head":"\nOh, heck, let's criticize "free college" in detail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bernie Sanders is making promises. 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