Free College Won't Solve the Problem

            I am a big supporter of education.  I believe that education can help a person make the most of his or her talents and abilities.  I paid for both of my children to attend a private Jewish Day School, and then to attend private colleges.  I have a law degree, and I just earned a Ph.D.  I teach political science to college students.

            But I don’t support Bernie Sanders’ call for universal free college tuition.

            Sanders’ main concern is that it’s getting hard to find a good job without a college degree. “By 1940,” Sanders wrote, “half of all young people were graduating from high school.  As of 2013, that number was 81%.  But that achievement is no longer enough.  A college degree is the new high school diploma.”

            Sanders correctly points out that “an important pathway to the middle class now runs through higher education.”  According to a 2014 report by Burning Glass, a large percentage of employers are demanding a college degree for many jobs that traditionally didn’t require them. 

            Comparing the credentials currently demanded by employers with the credentials of the people who actually hold those kinds of jobs, Burning Glass found large gaps.  For example, while “65% of postings for Executive Secretaries and Executive Assistants now call for a bachelor’s degree,” Burning Glass found that “only 19% of those currently employed in these roles have a B.A.”

            In some jobs, the skills the employers say they want aren’t necessarily taught at the college level. While there are some jobs that do require a greater level of skill because of changes in technology, Burning Glass concluded that employers may “be using the bachelor’s degree as a rough rule of thumb screening system to recruit better workers.” 

            Two factors could be driving this. First, there is still an oversupply of applicants relative to the number of available jobs. That means that employers can afford to be fairly picky about the people they consider for any job opening. With so many people seeking to fill so few positions, employers can hold out for Cadillacs when all they really need are Chevys.

            Second, while a college degree doesn’t necessarily indicate that a job applicant has more job-related skills than a high school graduate might have, it does indicate that an applicant has developed the drive and internal fortitude to stick out a fairly rigorous academic program for at least four years.  Burning Glass found that in jobs that did not require a college degree but did required a certification of some sort, the gap between credentials required and the credentials the work force actually has was considerably smaller.

             I’m all for making sure that Americans have the skills they need to become competitive in what has become a global labor market.  But, it’s not clear that the best way to accomplish this is to send everyone to college.  

            We have to face the reality that our current public school system simply doesn’t prepare everyone for the academic demands of college.  That could mean that a vast number of people will flunk out, colleges will have to devote far greater resources to remedial coursework or that standards at public colleges will fall.

            Second, providing a means for everyone to get a college degree might not solve the problem.  Making free college available could have the unintended effect of perpetuating and exacerbating  the paper chase.  Employers who can be picky might simply begin to require new employees to have post-graduate degrees. 

            There’s a better way to solve the problem. Sanders would fund his program with a financial transactions tax.  That money could be better spent doing two things.

            First, the government could adopt a full employment policy along the lines recommended by Jared Bernstein in The Reconnection Agenda.  As employer of last resort, the government would pick up the slack in the labor market. There would be fewer people competing for jobs, and so employers would be forced to drop their demands for credentials that their workers they don’t really need to operate their businesses.  An added bonus of this policy is that wages would go up as businesses compete for workers.

            Second, the government could subsidize the creation of training centers where people can learn and receive a certification for the skills they need to be successful in careers that require technical know-how, but not the rounded academic experience colleges offer.

            The government could even devote some of the funds to public service programs that can give young people experience that might help them decide whether they need college in order to do something meaningful with their lives.

            Sanders deserves credit for keeping the problems middle class families face front-and-center.  But this is not your father’s economy we’re dealing with, and we need a creative post-New Deal, post-Great Society plan for coping with it.