Another study has shown the Bernie Sanders’s plan for free college would disproportionately favor the middle- and upper-class over the poor.
Part of the reason is that richer students attend more expensive colleges, and thus they would claim more of the funding.
The report from the Brookings Institution details a blind spot in free college plans: non-tuition costs are a larger share of college spending.
“Devoting new spending to eliminating tuition for all students involves a tradeoff with investing the same funds in targeted grant aid that would cover more of the total costs of attendance for students from less well-off families,” Matthew M. Chingos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, wrote.
The blanket spending approach advocated by Sanders ignores the reality of college costs.
When the Sanders campaign promised to fight “to make sure that every American who studies hard in school can go to college regardless of how much money their parents make,” most Americans understood it as a program to boost low-income students.
The reality, as more details of the plan emerge, is that college will become a middle-class entitlement.
Part of the problem is public misperception about student loans. Millennials carry a lot of student debt, but for graduates, it’s manageable. Roughly one-third of millennials hold a degree, and the ones who struggle are college dropouts who can’t repay their loans. Higher education is accessible to poor students, but completion is the biggest issue. Dropping out gives students debt without the economic benefit of a college degree and leaves them in dire straits.
Poorly targeted proposals for free college don’t improve upon that situation. Students in the bottom quartile of the national income quartile only pay an average tuition of $1,673, Chingos noted. The issue holding back poor students isn’t tuition levels – it’s completion levels. The Sanders plan fails to grasp that problem and substitutes greater government spending that benefits wealthier students, justifying its plan as one of economic justice for poor students.
“Young people fully understand that they are the future on this country and they want to determine the future of this country,” Sanders said in a speech at Penn State University. “Why are we punishing millions of young people for doing exactly what we asked them to do?”
It’s an important issue, and one Sanders should research more. Government intervention to make college more affordable has helped increase tuition prices 40 percent within the last decade. More spending, and more government involvement, isn’t likely to turn that tide.
