BY CHELSEY JONES
Free tuition for all students would save $6.4 billion dollars—so, why aren’t we planning for a tuition free 2015-2016 school year?
In January, Jordan Weissmann published an article in The Atlantic about government spending on American higher education; he writes that our country could actually save money if public college tuition was free. Department of Education research shows that 62.6 billion dollars were collected from students for college tuition. Here’s where things get interesting: our current spending on student financial aid? 69 billion dollars.
As someone who is carrying around six-figures of student loans, Weissman’s article got me pretty excited. Conversations about higher education costs and soaring student debt pop up pretty much anywhere—dinner parties, bars, nail salons—and everyone wants a quick fix. There’s quite a bit of unrest; we’re asking what we actually get for all of the money we’re spending. Creating a tuition-free system won’t offer any accountability. The government would struggle to hold institutions accountable and perhaps more importantly, institutions would struggle to hold students accountable.
The requirement of personal financial investment in higher education reflects a belief that individuals will personally benefit and be wealthier after obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree. To this end, the person who benefits should take on the cost and thus, our society expects students to pay their own way. There are indisputable benefits to a society with an educated populace: less crime, more political involvement, less need for public assistance, more economic growth. Still, the assumption is true: people who graduate from college will make more money.
What is uncertain is how long that truth will remain. At every family gathering I find myself explaining what I study and I am bombarded with stories of college graduates who are unable to find jobs or who are drastically underemployed. ‘How do you explain that?’ my relatives ask me. Students are taking on loads of loans and are not being employed at wages that enable the loans to be repaid. As of May 2013, college students and college graduates in the United States have accumulated 1.2 trillion dollars in loan debt. This startling amount becomes even more daunting when coupled with knowledge that loans continue to grow and the pay-off is not happening at a desirable rate. As of March 2013, the Department of Education’s data indicate that 999 billion dollars of loan debt is outstanding. At the heart of it, college costs are exploding and graduates are not getting jobs that can support loan payoffs.
Rather than providing tuition-free higher education, which would protect students from spending money to invest in education, it seems more prudent to implement mechanisms that hold institutions accountable. Colleges have a role in ensuring their students are mastering relevant knowledge, knitting together curriculum and experiences that make them marketable in the workplace. In early 2013, President Obama introduced The College Scorecard. Feeling a bit like a hybrid between a ranking sheet and a financial aid report, The Scorecard intends to make institutions more transparent about the debt their students shoulder and their ability to pay it back. It’s a good start into higher education accountability, offering students valuable information about college finances, but there’s a dark side: colleges can use a need to boost their Scorecard as a reason to not take on students who will need a lot of financial aid. Students who are at risk of dropping out or of graduating without strong job prospects can be viewed as a liability and institutions may simply deny them admission.
It’s imperative that we begin to reflect on ways to hold institutions accountable to instruct their pupils in challenging ways with coursework that develops critical thinking and reasoning skills, marketable skills in any work environment. The College Scorecard is a good starting point but offers an easy way out for institutions, which can turn away students who might threaten their standing. If we were to offer free tuition for students to attend college, the issue of accountability would not subside. As we begin to juxtapose the value of academic freedom with the importance of student learning in higher education, it becomes clear: helping students pay for college is the just the tip of the iceberg.
My first draft of this article was titled, “Hello? American Government? Hi! Can I have 62.6 billion dollars? Trust me on this one—I’ll fix everything.” It’s clear now how wholly inaccurate this title would have been—62.6 billion dollars won’t fix everything. It is a misdirected attempt to solve the problem of paying increasing tuition and dealing with crippling buyers remorse for the ever after. While money won’t fix the problem, finding ways to make sure educational investments yield appropriate dividends long-term can make the debt seem worth it. Ensuring institutions are held accountable for the success of their graduates and the usefulness of the degrees they offer will yield alumni who feel their money was well spent.
TC Public Space 