Free college in America is no longer just an idea
Progressives finally have a template for implementing free college.
In these volatile moments of American history, it’s a little too easy to neglect the good omens. With today’s news dominated by the United Airlines debacle (read Paul Constant’s perceptive article on the matter), the San Bernardino shooting, and the Syrian War, the media certainly isn’t going to talk much about New York state’s new free college plan.
That doesn’t mean it’s not big deal. It’s huge for the progressive movement. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tuition initiative offers an excellent template for how Americans can make college less of a luxury and more commonplace and accessible.
Free college for all seems like a perfect policy idea for the times we live in. It addresses and counters perhaps the largest problem in America today: inequality of income. Quite frankly, we need Americans outside of the top 10% to be earning more money. If you’re outside of that prestigious class, your incomes have barely improved since 2000. Most Americans don’t have $1,000 in their bank accounts.
There is a solution though: we know that all forms of post-secondary education help put more money in pockets:
American workers with a college degree are paid 74 percent more than those with only a high school degree, on average, nearly the biggest premium in the O.E.C.D.
That extra money gets spent or saved — two economic decisions that help create a prosperous American economy.
Instead of offering tax cuts for the rich and deregulating our economy even further, let’s put money in the hands of working Americans. Post-secondary education clearly leads to higher incomes than a high school education. It’s a simple equation: more education = more income. Cuomo’s plan understands that reality and acts upon it.
Now that I’ve applied some positivity to New York’s college plan, let me now introduce my pessimism. Leading the way has to be the income threshold qualification:
State residents with household incomes under $100,000 will be able to enroll in state public colleges tuition-free. The income limit rises to $125,000 in three years.
That seems troublingly arbitrary. You have to pay tuition if your household makes $110,000 but not if you make $99,999? That’s so unsatisfactory. Cuomo and Democrats move from advancing an universal ideal (free college) to a slightly subsidized commodity (income-based college). During the 2016 primary I let similar frustrations out:
Hillary loves using the line that “I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump’s kids to college.” Yet once again, couldn’t this same critique of free college by applied to free pre-k? Or free community college (a policy she supports as well)? Or hell, even free high school?
Ultimately, that’s where progressives need to move the needle.
Democratic leaders like Barack Obama should instead spend their time changing the story around higher education and its purpose: transforming it from a market commodity into a right. Hillary Clinton’s recent college affordability plan is doing just that (albeit gradually).
Replace “Hillary Clinton’s” with “Andrew Cuomo’s” and the point still applies. Republicans are never afraid of campaigning on simple and understandable policies. Meanwhile, Democrats bargain themselves down before they’ve even said the idea out loud. It shows that we internalize and cow to Republican ideas of what is “possible” in our democracy today.
The 2016 election cycle illustrated that voters are sick of incrementalist politics. I appreciate that governing requires a level of compromise and so some policies are never going to fully develop as intended. However, that point assumes that we have an opposition that is interested in working with us. That’s not the political reality. In order for us to change the nation, we’re going to need to control Congress and the White House (not to mention state and city legislatures, governorships and eventually the SCOTUS). Essentially, we’ll need the reality that the Republican Party has achieved right now.
And to get there, to get to a point where we can be the majority party (that actually reflects the true desires of the majority) we should advance free public college.
That’s going to be a big lift. We know the right will attack it as another government handout. But Americans feel these tuition costs. Just 21% of us believe college education is affordable. When Democrats start this conversation with the American people, they at least know that their audience is receptive to the dialogue.
So how should we communicate and sell free college? Those left-of-center need to deliver a better narrative around why free college is much more than just a government handout. To do that, we need to speak to people’s patriotism. Our message should be: improving access to education is an American tradition and it’s what has made us so enterprising.
The pitch then shouldn’t be that it’s a “fair” policy. Instead, we should frame free college as an economic issue. Talk about the influx of more money into the economy and how that will help local businesses. Talk about how free college will allow for greater levels of saving, so young people can finally afford to buy their first home.
Arguing for public education through that lens makes the idea of “free” education far more digestible for the undecided. That sort of argument is aspirational, bold and not cloaked in political banalities. It’s presented as an issue that everyone can relate to — one that both appeals to their conscience and wallet.
Cuomo and New York’s college plan has put progressives on the correct route, yet that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be looking for a more direct path. To attain free college for all, let’s take a slightly sharper turn. Let’s make it free, even for the richest of us.
