Free College

One of the topics that has been discussed lately is student loan forgiveness and free college for everyone. The two main objections that I have heard to this are “how are we going to pay for that?” and “I paid off my loans, why should anyone else get a free ride?” In answer to the first objection, the same way we pay for everything else that we think is a priority. We never ask how we’re going to pay for our wars and when we asked how we were going to pay for the big corporate tax cut in 2017 we never received a coherent answer. So pretending that it’s a matter of being fiscally prudent is a bit disingenuous. The other objection requires a bit more context and nuance.

First we have to ask ourselves whether or not it’s in the national interest for everyone to have the opportunity to become educated or trained to the point where they are able to earn according to their abilities and potential. At this point I am not asking how this would be accomplished, just whether in principle it is a good thing for all Americans to have access to whatever education (and that includes vocational training) to be able to earn a living wage and have the opportunity to reach their potential. I think that the answer is an unequivocal “yes”. Why wouldn’t we want every American to have access to whatever level of education that they need to pursue the career that they desire? I’m going to proceed under the assumption that this is a good thing, that it’s in the national interest and look at the possible ways to achieve this.

Before getting into the various possibilities, I want to look at the objection from those who have paid off their loans already. One way to look at that objection is to ask whether we should ever try to improve a situation just because people didn’t benefit from it in the last. If the child tax credit increases this year, should I be angry that it was lower when I was raising children? Speaking of child care expenses, years ago my insurance company decided to start covering orthodontic expenses after I had paid for braces for six of my children. Should I have been entitled to a refund for all my expenses that would have been covered if the change had taken place earlier? I could have asked, of course, but I wouldn’t have gotten it! Were people who were now able to have their kids’ braces covered hurting me, just because I had to pay in full? Of course not. It’s understandable that someone who had budgeted her money and gone without for years to pay off student loans would be resentful that some people didn’t pay theirs off. It’s easy to believe that everyone should be able to accomplish what they did and that people who would benefit from loan forgiveness are somehow lazy freeloaders.

Why do people default on their student loans? Statistically it’s not due to laziness or an attempt to defraud, but often it’s a result of the earning potential of available jobs falling behind the requirements of loan repayment. Sometimes a medical or family emergency affects the ability to repay. In many cases the loan debt acquired during college will take decades to repay. For every person who “virtuously” worked hard to retire their student loan debt, there are others who will never get it all paid off, despite making payments every month for the rest of their lives. These people often have a work ethic equal to those who do get their loans paid off, but circumstances have affected them differently.

What about free college? Again we hear the same arguments from people who didn’t get free college and see it as a personal affront if others get a free ride. But some people already get a free ride through college. Why should a football or basketball player get tuition fully covered because they can play a game well? There are plenty of academic scholarships, which make slightly more sense, but still, it’s free. So the objection to someone else having no tuition doesn’t really hold water. A university's expenses have to be paid for somehow; logically the lack of revenue from scholarship athletes will be made up with higher tuition from everyone else. The argument, however, is usually extended to point out that they don’t want their tax dollars to pay for someone else’s education. To this I refer to one of my first points about an educated populace being in the national interest. Taxes are collected and disbursed to address the common good. Should we be tallying how much we pay in and compare it to our perceived benefits? How would that work? We don’t get to opt out of percentages of our taxes because we don’t agree with how they are spent.

No one is saying that free college means that there will be no admission standards. Admittedly there would be a lot of details to work out if such a plan ever saw the light of day. If college were free, we certainly wouldn't want it to be a consequence-free four years of partying. There would have to be standards for admission and for remaining; there would have to be provisions taking into account the opportunities that a student had before college. Were they in an elite private school, their education supplemented by tutors? Or were they in a school in a low-income area? Did they have the freedom to devote time and energy to their studies, or were they working 40 hours a week helping to support their family? Nothing is simple.

So let's look at this and try to determine if (1) it's in the national interest and (2) it's doable, and put aside the selfish "I got mine" arguments.