Free College

During the Obama administration, a major component of higher the proposed education budget called for free tuition for two years at community college for students who kept up a grade-point average of 2.5 or better, and who graduated within three years.  Although the proposal was met with mixed reviews, the concept of helping students succeed by providing an academic pathway is undeniably a solid one. Subsequently, similar proposals were discussed during the 2016 presidential campaign and now have been brought forth by various individual states.  Qualifications to participate in such programs vary, but generally involve income levels and performance expectations.

However, as is often the case, the devil is in the details. In fact, an idea that sounds so simple and straightforward as two free years of college is in fact incredibly complex. The reason for the complexity lies in the multitude of pieces that need to be put into place before any such proposal can be realized, and in the fuzziness of the proposal itself.

Of significant concern is that the two years are only “free” to the students who qualify. And they are not “free,” as in “no one has to pay.”  Aside from the tuition, there are still the matters of paying for facilities, utilities, support systems, faculty, and, well, you get it.  All these services are not free.  They will need a business model to support them. The current business model for public higher education primarily involves budgetary support from the federal government and states, as well as tuition, endowments, and other sources depending on individual states and institutional strategies. But no viable template exists.

So let’s consider subsidies from the federal and state governments. The problem here lies in the fact that there is no plan for where these funds will come from.  The logical answer is that the funds could come largely from increased taxes.  However, this flies in the face of the fact that state subsidies for public education are at all time lows. Community colleges in Arizona, for instance, will get single digit percentages of their operating funds from state subsidies this year.  Many other states face similar situations.  The sad truth is that for many states, education is the first item to be pared back in budget cuts. So even if the federal government could pony up, which it does not plan to do, there would still be significant shortfalls in funding. So taxes are not the answer.

Of some import in determining which students would benefit from two free years of college, is the definition of “student,” which again would seem straightforward. Not so.  This is because federal guidelines and measurements are geared to first-time, full-time students.  Student success, and thus the success of educational institutions, is tied to the assumption that students progress directly from high school to college with no delay and then go to school full-time for two years.  Unfortunately, that profile fits only about 25% or less of today’s college-level students.  Today’s community college student is in his or her mid-twenties, works full- or part-time, likely has a family, and probably has accumulated some postsecondary credits along the way.

This profile raises a host of difficulties. For many students, full-time, on-campus attendance is simply not an option.  On-line options may be better depending on what programs can be accessed virtually; however, online participation often runs afoul of what it means to be “full-time.”  Students will also need to have previously earned credits articulated into free college programs.  In addition, many students will qualify for prior learning assessment and will need to have their life experience assessed and appropriate credit awarded.  All of this means that “two years” will be a moving target for today’s students, depending on previous academic and life experience.  And then there is actual amount of time they might take to complete “two years” of work.  After all, traditional college students today rarely complete either a two-year of four-year program in the allotted time.

One last perspective to consider in all this is the array of unintended consequences that could come from the necessity of states and the federal government having to cooperate in in a free college program. States will have to agree individually to come up with some percentage of the funding for the proposal.  The federal government cannot mandate this participation, because education is almost exclusively the domain of states.  Therefore, some states might choose to participate, while others might decline or choose to implement some other system—or none at all. 

This state of affairs could ultimately lead to students who live in non-participating states choosing to apply to colleges outside of their home states, or finding other avenues for matriculating at colleges in states that participate in a “free” program.  Transferring credits could also be an issue as students try to optimize their opportunity for “free” college.

So what can we draw from an admittedly somewhat dreary view of this proposal?  I don’t think that the concept of free education is doomed. But the concept calls for a more informed and balanced approach. To address the variety of issues I have outlined, it makes sense to enlist the aid of those people who actually understand the issues and could help in a real way to devise a system that might minimize the cost and maximize the value of both two-year and four-year degrees.  Specifically, a collaboration among higher education experts, state education regulators, accreditors and the federal government needs to be created and charged to address the larger problem of the cost and value of higher education by working through the issues we have discussed here, as well as others. Such a bottom-up approach could well result in a proposal that would be a win-win for students and the country.