I have to admit that I had a tough time getting interested in the primaries before Monday night. I don’t like (read: borderline-despise) Hillary Clinton, but everything I heard told me that there was no way she wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. But Monday’s virtual tie—in the state that tipped Obama as a frontrunner—finally roused me out of my torpor. I was actually excited by the prospect that someone who casts himself as a democratic socialist seemed to be performing quite well in a presidential election. And running on a platform emphasizing wealth inequality? FINALLY. The fact that he looks like Larry David only made me more excited.
But then I went to Bernie Sanders’ website. And I was not feeling the Bern. Sure, I like the idea of the 1% finally being made to pay a fair share. But his focus seems to be mostly on closing the gap between the top 1% and the top 33% (actually, top 31.96%). The two-thirds of Americans below that seem to be an afterthought.
I realize that he is proposing a lot of things on the progressive wish list, including expanding Social Security, adopting universal health care, and (the main subject of this post) free college. But there’s a theme running through many of the items on his “Issues” page, including the items in that last sentence—they would be of far greater use to the upper middle class Americans than they would be to the poor.
The epitome of this to me is the second item on his Issues list—free college. That sounds great. But that’s not very useful to people who are stuck in crappy school districts and might not be able to get into—much less graduate from—college. I looked on the rest of his page for his K-12 education plan...and amazingly, this progressive hero didn’t have one.
Most of the talk regarding student loans and "free" college come from, well, people like me - white people from a middle-class background who have a lot of student debt. I was screwed by the current system because my family was neither rich enough to pay for my college nor poor enough that need-based aid covered most of my college expenses.
But I'm not at risk of going on food stamps. Lots of other people are. Even if I were unmarried and lost my current job, I'd have the option of moving back in with my family and living rent-free until I was on my feet again. Lots of other people don't have that option. The push for college to be free usually comes from people who already went to college, or whose children are virtually certain to go to college anyway. In other words, the middle class. Not the poor.
In my job every day, I work with many people for whom free college wouldn't do them any good. They mostly fall into one of two categories: 1) they did not complete high school for a variety of reasons (few-to-none of which, I would argue, are any fault of theirs); or 2) even if they DID finish high school, their K-12 education was so poor that they would have no real hope of getting a degree even if they started taking classes at a community college (to say nothing of trying to get into a 4-year school). For them, "free" college tuition would be meaningless. And sadly, it will be just as meaningless for their children too, unless we quickly and massively improve K-12 education where they live.
In modern America, free tuition and drastic cuts in student loan interest rates would not even be a good “investment” absent improved K-12 education. Free tuition would not greatly increase the number of people who attend college. For the most part, it would simply reduce the debt burdens of people who go to college anyway. For those people, it would not an investment. It would just be a subsidy. You're just paying them to do something they would have done anyway.
And here’s the thing: means-testing wouldn’t solve the problem, again absent substantial improvement in K-12 education. Means-testing would be a modest palliative, not a cure for the regressive impact that free higher ed would have. If K-12 stays the way it is now, no amount of means-testing could make massive higher ed subsidies progressive rather than regressive. Means-test out the top 20%, and you'll still have a system where the upper-middle class benefits way more than the lower-middle class and the poor. Means-test out the upper-middle class too, and you still have a system where the middle-class will benefit way more than the poor.
There is no way around that, because the wealthier you are, the higher your grades are likely to be and the better you are likely to do on standardized tests, extracurriculars, and virtually every other "merit"-based measure upon which colleges base their admissions decisions. No matter how you slice it, richer kids are going to be more likely to go to college and to go to better colleges than poorer kids.
To make an analogy, free college would be a lot like the home mortgage interest deduction. Proponents of that deduction have argued that it helps out middle-class families burdened by debt and provides "stimulus" because families who receive it would be purchasing items in the consumer economy rather than using it to repay debt. But the richer you are, the more likely you are to own a house, and the bigger and more expensive that house will be. Consequently, the richer you are, the more the home mortgage interest deduction benefits you.
So what can be done to improve K-12 education? Personally, I think the most critical component would be switching from property taxes to state (or better yet, federal) income taxes as the main component of funding. Structurally, the school year should be lengthened, with fewer short breaks instead of one long break. After school programs also need significant expansion—both so parents don't have to take as much time off work (improving parents' economic situation) for younger students, in addition to the usual (and much weaker) justification that we need such programs in order to keep kids from roaming the streets and getting into trouble.
Preschool that is more than just daycare; free school-offered SAT/ACT prep in low-performing districts; better support for children with learning disabilities (although that has improved significantly over the past 15 years); the creation of separate vocational tracks for students, a la the Nordic and German systems...I could go on forever. The list of things that need fixing in our K-12 system is appallingly long. And they are, I am convinced, the main things we can do to fix the major socioeconomic gaps in our society.
Would free college help at the margins? Yes. Would it help some truly poor people who would not otherwise be able to afford college anyway? Sure. But IMHO, it's mostly a push by (and would mostly benefit) the already-privileged. And it distracts from the primary source of educational inequality: the extreme gap in K-12 education.
Sorry. But until Sanders fixes that gap and promotes a K-12 education plan as far-reaching as his higher education plan, I won’t be feeling the Bern.