Problems Might Lie Ahead If Public Colleges Go Tuition Free

The Problem With Public Colleges Going Tuition-Free

Hillary Clinton’s proposal to make public higher education more accessible to lower- and middle-income students could have the opposite effect

Ronald Brownstein | August 18, 2016

It seems self-evident that eliminating tuition at public colleges for most families, as first Bernie Sanders and now Hillary Clinton has proposed, would increase access to higher education for low-income and minority students. It would reverse one of the key trends limiting opportunity for lower- and middle-income young people: a sustained shift of the cost of public higher education from taxpayers to students and their families.
But without the proper safeguards, such a program might still, paradoxically, narrow access. That’s because tuition-free public college could compound the increasing stratification of post-secondary education into a two-tier system that slots most low-income and minority students into the least selective institutions with the fewest resources and reserves admission to elite campuses mostly for kids from the upper middle-class and beyond.

Tuition-free college wouldn’t address the principal reasons the top public schools don’t admit more applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-problem-with-tuition-free-public-education/496238/

"Making College Debt Free for All Americans" Source: https://martinomalley.com/policy/make-college-debt-free/

Source: http://www.dailytoreador.com/news/students-react-to-sanders-free-college-tuition-plan/article_e3aa9eda-e4e0-11e5-9291-e3e6cb1618ce.html

<more at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-problem-with-tuition-free-public-education/496238/; related articles and links: https://martinomalley.com/policy/make-college-debt-free/ (Making College Debt free for All Americans. 2016) and http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/sfl-clinton-college-plan-opinion-20160818-story.html (Private Colleges May Not Survive Clinton’s Free-Tuition Plan | Opinion. August 18, 2016)>