Hey Wisconsin — Bernie Sanders is Right About Making College Affordable

College is unaffordable. Period. I’ve spent 15 years studying American higher education up close, and the situation is untenable. That’s especially true in Wisconsin, where even after all grants and scholarships, low-income students at UW-Milwaukee have to pay more than $12,000 a year for college. I reveal the status quo with all of its warts in my new book, out in September.

You need to know this: The candidate with the best plan for making college affordable in the way that 21st century America deserves is Senator Bernie Sanders.

Yeah, he is ambitious to call for making public higher education tuition-free. All of it. He goes even further than I’ve gone in calling for making the first two years of college affordable. But he is RIGHT to do it.

Here’s why:

1. Bernie Sanders recognizes that the middle-class is being priced out of college — and his plan does something about it by bringing everyone, every family and every child, under one plan — together. Many families are too “rich” to qualify for aid, and too poor to be able to afford college. The FAFSA tries to sort out who needs what in an effort to ration money. But the FAFSA is an American bureaucratic tragedy that alienates people from pursuing college at all. The sort of FAFSA simplification pursued by Hillary Clinton is a bandaid. Sanders rejects the use of means-testing entirely — cutting out the FAFSA which is an expensive process for colleges, universities, students, and families. In doing this, he broadens access to all of those people who can’t file the FAFSA because they lack the requisite documents.
2. While universal in approach, the Sanders plan is targeted. It focuses on the public sector (where the vast majority of low-income students attend college) and will disproportionately benefit those from the lower income brackets.
3. Educational quality is paramount in the Sanders plan. It ensures that sufficient funds are allocated so that public colleges and universities have what they need to provide a high-quality education. The plan emphasizes the importance of employing talented, tenured faculty to educate students, supporting them with professional development, providing robust academic offerings, and shoring up student support services. The Sanders plan also addresses educational quality by diversifying the student body in public higher education (drawing in DREAMers and those from an array of economic backgrounds) and reducing support for for-profit colleges and universities.
4. The Sanders plan protects national treasures. Recognizing the ongoing importance of these colleges and universities, the Sanders plan shores up the financial support of both public and private minority-serving institutions and further protects students by providing aggressive competition for for-profit colleges and universities.
5. Living expenses are addressed by this tuition-free plan. There is too much focus on tuition in current talk. The non-tuition costs of college are the vast majority of what students struggle to pay. The Sanders plan deals with these issues. Colleges and universities will be given incentives to provide supportive services to address living costs — for example, in TN and OR, the free community colleges have been catalyzed to work on affordable housing and open campus food pantries. Moreover, the federal work-study program will be massively expanded in order to address underemployment among undergraduates — providing on-campus work opportunities that align with educational activities.

Sure, the Sanders plan could be even better. For example, I think adding a community service component might reinforce the compact between students and government. Tennessee is taking responsibility for providing tuition-free community college now, and in return students are responsibly providing community service. That service could be done before, during, or after college, so as to not interfere with academics.

And while Sanders provides a clear route to paying for his plan, I think there are many potential routes. He could repurpose existing monies wasted at for-profit colleges or on tax credits, for example. But that isn’t the point: He’s developed a major policy goal, and the funding will be appropriate to fit that policy. That’s the right approach.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s higher education plan is a modest, barely appropriate improvement on the status quo that will fall apart because it lacks cohesion, universality, and — oh wait — it totally depends on governors like Scott Walker! Her “New College Compact” only engages “states that commit to ensuring that no student should borrow for tuition and improved affordability for other costs at 4-year public colleges and universities…The size of federal investment for each state meeting the compact will depend on the number of in-state students enrolled in public colleges and universities, with higher grant amounts for low- and middle-income students.”

She says Walker won’t participate in the Sanders plan. Well, he won’t participate in hers either. What then?

Things will likely be fine under the Sanders plan, since if Walker leaves his state’s residents to pay $100,000 or more for a bachelor’s degree (like many in the middle-class do now), while neighboring Minnesota makes college free, those folks will either move him out or move themselves. But under Hillary’s plan, there won’t be any free college to turn to — Walker will be driving the bus.

The Clinton plan is vague on what happens to middle-class families. On the one hand it says they will not have debt, but on the other hand it continues to rely on means-testing. It describes a compact with states but never explains how it will get private colleges and universities to participate in making college debt free for middle-class families. It maintains the FAFSA alienating undocumented students and others who can’t get their parents’ paperwork. It provides no mechanism for addressing for-profit colleges and universities. It may even fund them. And Clinton’s plan requires students to work — often at low-paid jobs that do nothing for their communities. Unlike community service or work-study, work brings no benefits for the education of students.

Finally — how will it be funded? All the campaign offers is “by closing tax loopholes and expenditures.” Sounds familiar. Sounds like the Sanders plan.

We can’t afford for Wisconsin public higher education to get more expensive. It’s time to do something about it. On Tuesday, vote for Bernie Sanders.