Most teens want college to be debt-free — until they realize it still has a cost.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch or free college, and if more students had studied Milton Friedman, they’d know that the funding for debt-free higher education has to come from somewhere else in the economy, even out of their own paychecks.
According to a study by Junior Achievement, a nonprofit youth organization, 69% of 13- to 17-year-olds are in favor of “debt-free college.”
But when pollsters asked if they supported “debt-free” education funded by higher taxes, support dropped to 33%.
The study surveyed more than 1,000 teens in April, just before Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., laid out her free college and student-debt forgiveness platform, which would eliminate tuition for public universities and forgive up to $50,000 in debt for households with an income less than $100,000.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., popularized the “free college” movement among the Democratic Party in 2015, and “college for all” is also a talking point in his 2020 presidential campaign.
Politicians hope to draw out the youth vote by telling young and future voters that college could be free, which at first appears to be a shrewd plan. Almost all of the teens in Junior Achievement’s study, 94%, planned to go to college, and 41% weren’t sure how they’d pay for it.
Yet many teens are smart enough to know that free college isn’t free, and the money to keep the classroom lights on can’t magically appear. With that in mind, 2020 Democrats may want to consider imitating South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg rather than Warren or Sanders.
“I have a hard time getting my head around the idea a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidize a minority who earn more because they did,” Buttigieg said to an audience of college students last month.
