Free Education for All?

Angus Johnston:

I've been saying for years that we need to have a national debate about whether we want to have a public higher education system in this country, and that our failure to have that debate is killing public higher ed. I believe that to be true. With taxpayer support for many public colleges sliding toward single-digit percentages, with out-of-state tuition at some public universities approaching Harvard's, with in-state applicants losing seats to make room for those out-of-state revenue streams in students' clothing, we're abandoning the idea of public higher education without giving that idea the respect of saying so.

And yet something curious is happening as a result. Slowly, haltingly, but with growing confidence, voices are beginning to rise in support of the concept of a higher education that is not merely public, but actually free. Economist Jeffrey Sachs claimed in a 2011 book that we could eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities nationwide for an investment of little as $15 billion a year, and since then the idea has been popping up more and more frequently in public discussion.

It's not a new idea, of course. As a delegate to the US Student Association's congresses in the early 1990s I remember ritually endorsing an end to tuition in resolutions every summer. But in those days the idea felt more than a little pro forma. Of course college should be free, we'd say, and then we'd go back to fighting tuition hikes and lobbying against Pell Grant cuts.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 29, 2013 12:14 AM
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