It's Time to Push for Free College by Max Page and Dan Clawson

Just about everyone agrees that college should be more affordable. A century ago high school was becoming a necessity, not a luxury; today the same is happening to college. If college is essential for building a career and being a full participant in our democracy as high school once was, shouldn't it be free, paid for by public dollars, and treated as a right of all members of our country?

We have made K-12 education free because it is good for the individual and for society. The same is true for higher education. As several recent studies have underscored, a college degree is a pathway to a more stable life, financially and otherwise, even for students who struggled in high school. Other studies show that there is no better short-term or long-term investment for the rest of society than higher education. For example, one study shows that new spending on public colleges, which would be sparked by an influx of more students, produces more economic activity than a similar-sized tax cut, or similar spending on roads and bridges. And, over their lives, college graduates smoke less, commit fewer crimes, draw less on social welfare programs, and generate more taxes.

The Case Against Free College

By Matt Bruenig

Of greater importance than all of those questions, however, is the more basic question about the fairness of free college as an idea. Those clamoring for free college make normative claims about the nature of a just and good society. As currently argued, however, these claims are largely uncompelling. Without a dramatic overhaul of how we understand student benefits, making college more or entirely free would most likely boost the wealth of college attendees without securing any important egalitarian gains.

The main problem with free college is that most students come from disproportionately well-off backgrounds and already enjoy disproportionately well-off futures, which makes them relatively uncompelling targets for public transfers. At age nineteen, only around 20 percent of children from the poorest 2 percent of families in the country attend college. For the richest 2 percent of families, the same number is around 90 percent. In between these two extremes, college attendance rates climb practically straight up the income ladder: the richer your parents are, the greater the likelihood that you are in college at age nineteen. The relatively few poor kids who do attend college heavily cluster in two-year community colleges and cheaper, less selective four year colleges, while richer kids are likely to attend more expensive four year institutions. At public colleges (the type we'd likely make free), students from the poorest fourth of the population currently pay no net tuition at either two-year or four-year institutions, while also receiving an average of $3,080 and $2,320 respectively to offset some of their annual living expenses. Richer students currently receive much fewer tuition and living grant benefits.

Assignment: Use the document I posted in the module. It has two passages related to college tuition. Create one paragraph that discusses the opposing views. Paraphrase the authors' viewpoints.

It's Time to Push for Free College by Max Page and Dan Clawson J...