I find it difficult to take Hillary Clinton’s $350 billion plan for “debt-free college” seriously. There’s an air of unreality about it. For years we’ve been observing that federal intervention raises costs and tuition, and now Mrs. Clinton wants to spend an additional $35 billion a year and reduce tuition.
Just look at George Leef’s article a few weeks ago, citing studies showing that more funding raises tuition. One by the New York Federal Reserve concludes that for every $3 of federal finding, tuition goes up by $2.
But Clinton is going to insist that in order to get the funds, state legislatures create “no-loan tuition” policies at their public universities and “tuition-free” community colleges.
This is the “nudge” technique that got us Common Core in K-12 schools (and, I am told, the No Child Left Behind law). By the way, the investment will be “fully paid for by closing tax loopholes and expenditures for the most fortunate.”
More than half the funds will go to “states and colleges”; one-third will go to debt relief, “allowing every American with outstanding public debt to refinance their student loans at today’s low interest rates”; the rest will go to “innovation,” such as allowing federal aid to go for “badges, specializations, certificates, or Nanodegrees.” (But watch out—they won’t be badges from for-profit schools; she’s also going to “crack down on law-breaking for-profits.” Those might as well be all for-profits, since she also plans to “close the 90-10 loophole for-profit schools use to prey on veterans.”)
There are lots of other ornaments on this Christmas tree, including a promise to make schools more accountable—along with expanding AmeriCorps (which has a loan forgiveness program); penalizing colleges if their graduates can’t pay back their loans (not a bad idea); using the forces of the “CFPB, FTC, DOJ, and VA to enforce laws against deceptive marketing” by for-profits; making sure that accreditation doesn’t stifle innovation, but, on the other hand, setting “standards high for existing and new entrants”; and “broadening support for student parents” (not students’ parents, but students who have children).
Because of her concern for historically black colleges and minority-serving institutions (HBCUs and MSIs) she’ll have a “a dedicated fund to help modest-endowment private colleges that serve a high percentage of Pell grant recipients lower the cost of attendance.” Students who get Pell grants can continue to get them, and since more tuition will be covered, the grants can be used for living expenses.
Even this long summary doesn’t list everything that has been thrown in this pot, supposedly to make college affordable. I like Senator Marco Rubio’s comment, quoted by Inside Higher Ed, that the plan will “pour a bunch of money into a 20th-century outdated model” of higher education. At least someone is skeptical.