Democratic presidential candidates
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have all offered plans for
making college more affordable.
Clinton's plan, announced on Monday at Exeter High School in Exeter, New
Hampshire, would use federal money to encourage states to provide “no loan
tuition” at public four year colleges and universities. Her program would cost $350 billion over 10
years and would be paid for by capping tax deductions for high-income
taxpayers.
Clinton's plan is not as generous as
the ones Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley are promoting. Sanders would pay for his plan with a small
tax on financial transactions. O'Malley
has not yet said how he would pay for his plan.
None of the 17 Republican
presidential candidates have placed a college affordability plan on the
table. And, judging from their reactions
to Clinton's plan, it's not likely any will.
I suppose that it would be a good
thing for the federal government to do something about the cost of getting a
college education. There's no question
that college costs are high. Given the
demand for financial aid, colleges are not particularly interested in helping
middle class families who have accrued a significant amount of home equity or
savings. Middle class parents are often
left with several unpalatable options: defy Suzie Orman and her fellow
financial pundits by raiding the retirement fund, take out enormous loans or,
saddle Junior with the responsibility of paying for his or her own
education.
It's also clear that getting a
college education has become a sine qua non for scoring almost any kind
of a job in a non-industrial or non-agricultural setting. Information age
employers want people who have college degrees, not so much for the sometimes dated
substantive things they have learned in school, but for the discipline and
civilized habits one acquires in college.
Yet the focus on finding ways to
reduce college tuition and the debt loads it can create raises a difficult
public policy problem. Everyone seems to
agree that the key to economic survival is now a college education. Doing something to reduce its cost should
encourage more people to enroll. But as
our educational system is currently configured, not everyone is in a position
to take advantage of what college offers.
Instead, programs that make college tuition more affordable mostly
benefit the affluent who would send their kids to college anyway.
You can see the differences in
college participation and graduation rates in the charts below. Income levels are highly predictive of who
goes to college and who eventually graduates.
The patterns are consistent and predictable. Rich kids are more likely to attend college
and graduate than poor kids.
Figure 1 Percentage of High School
Graduates Continuing on To College
 |
| Source: Indicators of Higher Education Equity, 45 Year Trend report, 2015 Revised Edition |
Figure 2-College Graduation Rates by
Family Income Quartile
 |
| Source: Indicators of Higher Education Equity, 45 Year Trend report, 2015 Revised Edition |
Part of the reason for these
disparities may well stem from the high cost of tuition. Children from low-income families may believe
that college is an unaffordable dream that can’t come true. For the low-income
students who do go to college, high tuition may require them to devote more
hours to income generating employment than to studying. Plans like those advanced by Clinton, Sanders
and O’Malley will certainly help with both problems.
But
plans that focus on reducing the cost of college education miss another, and
potentially more serious underlying problem: Our current primary and secondary education
systems weren't designed to address the pathologies of poverty that burden low-income
students from the start, and they don't do a good job in preparing those students
for the college experience.
According to a 2014 White House
Report,
many low-income students
- lack the support and resources to navigate college preparation–from test taking, to applications, to financial aid–and they end up choosing a college that is not a good fit for them;
- lack encouragement and early exposure to college that can help aspirations take root
- are less likely to attend schools with a strong college-going culture or to engage in early learning experiences like college visits and summer programs
- lack the counseling and advising support they need to excel in entrance exams like the SAT and ACT, submit quality applications, and apply for financial aid
- are often unaware of all of the available options across higher education and miss the opportunity to attend institutions that could give them a better chance of success
- once enrolled in a college, require remedial courses
that don't prepare them adequately for college level work
The blame for this falls squarely on or current system of education finance. States and localities pay the lion's share of the cost of education children. They get the funds their schools need from local sales and property taxes. In rich areas where property values are high and people have more disposable income, it is much easier to raise the funds the schools need than it is in poorer school districts.
Consequently, people who live in
affluent areas are much more likely to lock in the advantages of their wealth
for their children. Children who live in
affluent areas with good school districts will be much more able to find lucrative
employment after they complete their educations than their low-income
contemporaries. The system we have
limits social and economic mobility because of the virtuous circles it creates
in wealthy areas and the vicious ones it creates in poor areas.
What we need is a way to equalize
the resources available to all school districts, and that means a much bigger
federal role in elementary and secondary school funding. If we want to insure that no child is ever
left behind, we need to focus on what goes on in education well before the college
application process begins instead of on subsidies for the families of upper
middle class children who may not need them.
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