Eric Johnson works in the financial aid office at UNC-Chapel Hill, and is an unabashed liberal. But he’s not buying into the mania on the left to make college free for everybody—he realizes it’s a way to buy middle-class votes rather than address higher education’s real access problems.
The real problem, as he sees it, is that good low-income students don’t receive enough support, and wind up with the life-crushing double-trouble of debt and no degree. That isn’t exactly my view, or the view of others at the Pope Center—I think the problem is more that a lot of young people are making poor choices by attending college right out of high school and winding up in the situation he describes. But Eric’s view is at least one to consider, particularly coming from one who works in the belly of the establishment.