The Expense of Free College

Free College is becoming such an expensive proposal that even Democrats are starting to notice.

“When congressional Democrats recently rolled out a new economic policy agenda aimed at staking out a new, populist-leaning course for the Democratic Party—dubbed ‘A Better Deal’—one idea was conspicuously missing: free college,” Anne Kim wrote in The Washington Monthly on September 12, 2017.

For one thing, there’s the cost. “One reason for this lack of enthusiasm might be the price tag,” Kim writes. “Even the skimpiest of benefits would be enormously expensive in the aggregate.” For example, U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders, D-VT, father of “College for All” legislation, himself “estimates the cost of his plan, to be paid for by a new ‘transactions tax’ on stock trades, would be $47 billion a year (and that’s assuming states pick up one-third of the tab).”

Then there’s the benefit, real or putative. “A 2016 Gallup poll, for example, found that less than half of Americans—or just 47 percent—supported the idea of tuition-free college,” Kim reports.

More recently, “In a post-election poll by PRRI/The Atlantic, 54 percent of white working class Americans said getting a college education is ‘a risky gamble,’ while just 44 percent said it’s ‘a smart investment.’”