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Making Tuition Reform Palatable
How can we reduce the astronomical cost of college tuition?
The most direct but politically impractical solution would be to cut off all financial aid for three to five years. Universities would complain loudly, but if a Republican President and Congress persevered, ultimately the universities would be forced to cut bureaucratic and academic bloat — and hence tuition. Subsequently, we could revive aid, but only for the very poor who show academic ability. This would have much less of an inflationary impact.
If we do this, the universities will scream that American higher education will be destroyed. The student-age population (and their parents) will be affronted and outraged, making this approach politically untenable.
So, how to proceed? I would sweeten the pot to reduce the opposition.
I’d combine an aid cutoff with a five-year suspension on all taxation for those in full-time higher education. This will lessen the impact of the aid cut-off for those whose educational aspirations are interrupted. Furthermore, I’d recommend the federal government offer to pay off half of all Americans’ huge outstanding student loan debts, because government policies caused the huge rise in tuition in the first place — and also because it would increase support for the entire reform package.
Within three to five years, I expect colleges and universities would be forced to cut their tuition drastically. A summer job would again be enough to pay for a semester or a year of college.
My poli-sci professor once described politics as a way of determining the distribution of advantages and disadvantages in a society. My solution would mitigate the disadvantages to people between 17 and 23 years of age.
I don’t know what the short-term cost to the federal budget would be, so if you can work it out, I’d especially appreciate your input.
Your thoughts?
Published in Education, General
@John Seymour- “The federal government does not belong in education. Period. The only tuition aid the feds ought to offer is to soldiers and veterans as a benefit, not as a support to the education establishment. As to everyone else, if ya ain’t smart enough to figure out how to pay for college, maybe ya don’t belong there.”
I pretty much agree. To me, the only question is how do we persuade enough people to support cutting off aid to make it politically feasible. After all, as Thomas Sowell said “Politicians don’t run for office to solve our problems, they run to solve theirs- acquiring and keeping power.”
@Guruforhire- re comment 12- The problem I have with that is government determining what students major in.
@La Tapada- “I would NOT want any plan that started with giving out more money. How about a simple graduated plan for decreasing federal financial aid each year and asking universities to collaborate by gradually scaling back their bureaucracy to bring down costs?”
The problem with that idea is that students and their parents would be getting less aid, and a gradual reduction in aid would take too long to lower tuition, so the political opposition would be formidable, if not insurmountable.
I disagree. It doesn’t determine what a student will major in, it determines what we have collectively decided has social value justifying the public purchasing part of it. Not paying for stupid things is what we SHOULD be doing.
If someone wants to take a major with low employment prospects at a school that can’t place their students, and whose graduates rarely goto work in their chosen field, they are more than welcome to do so. It is just a poor public investment, and should be treated as such.
We already made a collective decision to invest in higher education, I am merely proposing that we exercise discretion.
I don’t trust unelected bureaucrats to make public choices for us. At least if congress is doing it, the public is being represented in the decision making part of the public investment.
Well I hope the free market can help obliterate majors like Women’s Studies.
@RightAngles- “Well I hope the free market can help obliterate majors like Women’s Studies.”
Your comment reminds me of an episode of the tv show ‘Family Ties,’ in which Michael J. Fox’s conservative character says “I love those phony majors, psychology, sociology, oh, and my favorite- Women’s Studies.”
GAH It’s been around that long. It might be too late.
I love this idea. I doubt it’ll be politically possible in the near future, but at some point we are going to hack to reckon with education subsidies. The current system will eventually collapse of its own accord, and as we get closer to that point ideas such as this one will begin to enter the mainstream political discourse.