What does it mean to have truly affordable college? It means having the guarantee of tuition-free college as a right with no ifs, ands or buts. This is why we at PHENOM oppose “last-dollar” programs such as the CHERISH Act.
As a compromise between the status quo of exorbitant college prices and the gold standard of tuition-free college, last-dollar programs are pared-down versions of tuition-free college that fall short by trying too hard to be moderate. And why back down from tuition-free college (a.k.a. covering the first dollar) if Massachusetts can clearly afford it?
But what exactly is a last-dollar policy? In a “last-dollar” program, the student pays as much as they can while the state agrees to cover the rest. For instance, if tuition is $15,000 and a student has $3000, they only pay that much, so the state covers the rest up to the last dollar.
It is true that any last-dollar program we could pass would be leaps and bounds better than the status quo: public colleges would become nearly free for all lower-income and middle-class students and they would become debt-free for everyone.
Also, compared to making college automatically tuition-free for everyone, last-dollar college programs are more affordable for the government, at least on paper. This is the main reason proponents give in favor of a last-dollar program over simply making college tuition-free for all: there is the assumption that tuition-free college would be too expensive, and that in turn making college free for the rich would be a waste of resources.
But this kind of policy logic, known as “means-testing”, is what dooms policies to fail: by excluding wealthier citizens, you’re branding the program as only benefitting poorer Americans while making lower-income students jump through hoops to get the aid they desperately need.
Limiting a program to less wealthy students requires them to prove that they don’t have enough money, a burdensome task for people already struggling to get by. To see how much harder excessive bureaucracy can make affording college, just look at the current FAFSA fiasco.
Just as underprivileged applicants have to waste time proving how much aid they need, wealthier citizens of Massachusetts will become more resentful of such a program they’re footing the bill for and don’t benefit from. They will likely make it harder for lower-income people to qualify for reduced tuition.
As has happened to other means-tested programs like Medicaid and welfare, these growing demands for stricter requirements can get to the point where it ironically becomes too hard for the underprivileged people who need it most to actually access it.
If we want to truly strike down barriers between rich and poor, shouldn’t we start by treating them as equals? If these wealthier citizens are already paying a lot in taxes to make college tuition-free, why don’t we make it free for them as well?
Furthermore, a last-dollar system is problematic as a matter of principle: while it would make college much more affordable for the majority, it would leave in place the ridiculous tuition price that got us in this mess in the first place.
But in either case, wealthier Americans will naturally be the main group funding more affordable college, whether by paying directly or through taxes. So in a way, is tuition-free college just the same thing as a last-dollar system but with extra steps?
Not quite. While the rich would still pay more, making them pay more would give them more of a reason to defend it. If wealthier citizens can send their children to our public colleges for free, they’ll be more willing to pay taxes and, in the long term, send their children to those public schools to get their money’s worth, as Meagan Day and Ryan Cooper have noted.
That translates into future political support. But if we expect to rely on the rich to fund it and yet we still charge them insanely expensive tuition, what reason would they have to support funding it at all?
Furthermore, simply guaranteeing everyone tuition-free college instead of means-testing eligibility is more efficient: less resources wasted on bureaucracy means more money available to simply cover everyone’s tuition and give colleges the funding they need.
To the credit of “last-dollar” ideas like the CHERISH Act, they are much more inclusive than most other means-tested programs: instead of only assisting the poorest, the middle class would also pay way less if the CHERISH ACT became law.
A recent survey found that 79 percent of Americans don’t even have more than $5000 in savings: assuming Massachusetts’ own data isn’t too far off, this means the vast majority of Massachusetts citizens would only pay a few thousand dollars to attend college if this program passed.
But why should we settle on this idea when tuition-free college is both more affordable and more sustainable in the long run? The Debt-Free Future Act, which would make all public colleges tuition-free if passed, would only cost Massachusetts $1.8 billion per year. Massachusetts can clearly afford it: Denmark, Norway and Finland all have smaller populations and are less wealthy than Massachusetts, yet they have tuition-free college and we don’t.
We already get $1.8 billion from the recently passed Millionaire’s Tax, we receive $15 billion from the Department of Defense every year, and we could get $1.2 billion more in revenue if it weren’t for decades of tax cuts for corporations. Passing a 2.5 percent tax on Massachusetts’ colleges with endowments over $1 billion would generate $2 billion to fully pay for tuition-free college.
This all goes to show that there is more than enough money for tuition-free college, and we just have to use it. While paying only $3000 instead of $15,000 or $10,000 per semester is a huge improvement, still paying that much shows just how low we have set the bar for college affordability.
Even though $3000 is a lot cheaper than $15,000, that’s still a lot of money. That’s the first and last month’s rent for a new apartment, half a year’s worth of car payments, half a year’s worth of groceries, and… well, you get the idea. So if life is expensive enough, and college is already hard enough, why should any of us spend that much money on it?
Yes, a last-dollar tuition program would still be a huge step forward compared to what we have today. But it is also a huge piece of legislation: since the above flaws give it very questionable long term durability, its failure could doom any other attempts at affordable college for a very long time.
So why not play it safe and choose a universal tuition-free college program that’s less of a hassle to implement, a policy we can already easily afford, and one that would give free college to the rich and poor alike? Because if we want to work together as a democracy and put aside our differences, getting an equal opportunity at the same well-funded, highly affordable colleges is a great start.