[caption id=”attachment_114844″ align=”aligncenter” width=”5184″] President Barack Obama speaks at Pellissippi State Community College Friday, Jan. 9, 2015, in Knoxville, Tenn. Obama is promoting a plan to make publicly funded community college available to all students. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
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Another day, another reason to mistrust President Obama’s “free” community college proposal and the $60 billion bill for taxpayers that goes along with it.
Obama has proposed waiving tuition for two years of community college, as part of his “bold” pre-State of the Union agenda.
Much of the proposal is fairly ambiguous, leading to a whole host of other potential issues, but Obama’s plan states that the federal government would foot 75 percent of the bill while states would cover the other 25 percent.
This funding plan not only forces a huge burden onto taxpayers, but also raises concern for the states.
Matt Reed, a community college dean, wrote in an op-ed for Inside Higher Ed that if another recession hits, this funding plan will make the idea of “free” community college entirely too unstable.
“Community college enrollments tend to be counter-cyclical to the economy. When the economy goes down, enrollments go up, and vice versa. That makes sense, if you think about it. For traditional-age students, parental income is a major factor in choosing a college. When that income is reduced or eliminated, Faraway State University becomes inaccessible, and the local community college suddenly looks pretty good. For adults thinking about coming back to school, the opportunity cost of higher education is lowest when jobs are scarcest. It’s one thing to choose between going back to school and working; it’s another to choose between going back to school and being unemployed,” Reed wrote.
“But recessions affect the federal government differently than they affect the states. The difference could make the proposed cost-sharing between the federal government and the states difficult to sustain.”
His reasoning is that while the federal government can and usually does run high deficits, especially during recessions, states do not have the same options. If states have to cover these costs during a recession, when demand for community college is at its peak, they will be caught in a “double bind.”
“At that point, my crystal ball tells me, we’d start to see states fail to meet their commitments,” Reed wrote. “If that happens during the wrong federal administration, it could kill the plan. At the very least, it suggests a basic instability.”
Of course, there are a lot of reasons to hate Obama’s “free” college plan, but even if you love it, Reed’s point is a solid one. There just isn’t enough of a structure in place to make this a viable option for potential students or the taxpayers and state governments that are on the hook for the funds.
