Education Free For All
by Jeff Thacker
Boston's Weekly Dig
September 4, 2002

Last September, 3,147 Massachusetts residents shelled out nearly $11,000 apiece for the privilege of entering the freshman class at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Another 1,506 out-of-state students handed over $19,000. Some of them received scholarships or other grants; many took out loans. Many of them also relied on their parents to help with tuition bills.

If Adolph Reed, Jr. and the Labor Party had their way, every one of those students, plus millions more, would be getting their college education for free. In a campaign entitled Free Higher Education, Reed and the Labor Party are pushing for the federal government to pay all tuition and fees for students enrolled in public universities and colleges across the United States. Reed is coordinating the campaign along with co-chair Mark Dudzic of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union and the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute, the educational and cultural arm of the Labor Party. It was first announced in an article by Reed, a political science professor at New School University, in the Fall 2001 issue of Dissent and was a centerpiece of the Labor Party's annual convention this past July.

While it may appear overwhelmingly difficult, precedent has been set. In 1944 Congress passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, popularly known as the G.I. Bill, under which 2.2 million veterans received full tuition support to attend college from the federal government.

According to Reed the movement is still in its early stages, as a grassroots network of coordinators tries to build up support on college campuses and through labor and academic organizations. They are asking college students and faculty to sign on to a Statement of Academics in Support of Free Higher Education and asking unions to pass a resolution in support of the campaign. (The statement and resolution can be read at http://www.freehighered.org.) The California State University system and the National Conference of Black Political Scientists have signed on, and the California Nurses Association is using the campaign to build awareness of the nursing shortage.

Though it might not seem it, the campaign's timing could hardly be better. Politicians, pundits and ordinary Americans all agree that while a college degree does not guarantee financial success, those entering the workforce without one are at a serious disadvantage. The US Department of Education touts that "in 2000, male and female college graduates earned 60 and 95 percent more, respectively, than those who completed only high school or a GED." Reed says, "We keep hearing over and over again from all the economists and pundits that if you want to have a chance to get a decent job, to have a decent life in America, you need to have a college education. If that's the case, that [a college education] is a basic condition for being a fully participating citizen, then having access to it should be a right."

Whether access to higher education should be a right or not is debatable, but one thing is certain: access is becoming prohibitively more expensive each year. According to the College Board, the average tuition at a four-year public college in 2001 was $3,754. At private colleges tuition averaged $17,123. Add room and board, books and other fees to tuition, and the average cost of a college education jumps to $11,976 at a public college and $26,070 at a private one. The Chronicle of Higher Education estimates that 67 private colleges will top $100,000 for four years, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Boston University. Nor are public universities doing anything to reign in their costs. A survey by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges found that public university tuitions across the country are rising in response to declining state revenues.

Across the UMass system (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell and Worcester) 2002-03 tuition has increased between 13 percent and 24 percent from 2001-02 levels. Earlier this summer the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance reported that rising tuition costs and shortages in state and federal financial aid will prevent over 400,000 qualified, low- and moderate-income students from attending four-year colleges this fall, and keep 170,000 of them from attending any postsecondary school at all.

In testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Advisory Board chairperson Dr. Juliet Garcia said that "students from low- and moderate-income families who graduate from high school fully prepared to attend a four-year college confront daunting financial barriers with major implications for these students and the nation." Independent education consultant Lawrence Gladieux noted that the "most straightforward action the federal government could take is to restore the promise and purchasing power that Pell Grants once represented for low-income students." He called financial aid an "insufficient condition for achieving the goal of equal opportunity. Access is not enough, nor is financial aid."

It also makes sense for the free higher ed program to target only public institutions and not the entire higher education industry. Aside from the fact that public dollars would be used to fund the program, of the 15 million students enrolled in postsecondary institutions, 79 percent are in public colleges, according to 2000 figures from the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics. The center expects enrollment in public institutions to grow to 13.5 million in 2012 from 11.8 million in 2000, a 15 percent increase. (Enrollment in private four-year institutions is predicted to increase to 4.1 million by 2012 from 3.6 million in 2000.)

In Some States, Free Tuition Is Already Here
In many states non-need-based scholarships are available, as legislators have woken up to the fact that rising tuition costs are putting college educations out of reach for some students, or at the very least are requiring them to take on loans that –– according to the Higher Education Project of State Public Interest Research Groups –– leave 39 percent of graduates with "unmanageable levels of debt."

The obvious example is California, which provides free tuition for state residents at California State University and University of California campuses. But UC students pay fees ranging from $3,579 to $4,594, and Cal State students are charged a State University Fee of $1,428 plus various campus fees. When the $6,800 average for room and board is factored in, public university students face an annual bill of over $8,000.

More narrowly focused programs have also been popping up over the past few years. Established in 1993 Georgia's HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) Scholarship provides free tuition and fees at public technical colleges to state residents who maintain a 3.0 grade point average in their high school or college studies. The program has disbursed over $1.5 billion to 700,000 students since its inception. Maryland offers a teachers scholarship, through which students can earn up to $5,000 annually for tuition. However, the requirements are somewhat stringent: as well as being state residents, scholarship students must maintain a 3.0 GPA, work towards teacher certification and sign a contract stating that they'll teach in Maryland public schools one year for each year they receive the scholarship. Here in Massachusetts high school students who score exceptionally well on the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) exam "and in other academic areas may …… qualify to receive free tuition at Massachusetts' state colleges," according to a letter from the governor's office sent to the parents of the Class of 2003, the first class required to pass the MCAS in order to graduate. While these programs certainly have merit, free higher education could render them useless, potentially savings states billions of dollars.

Financing the Program
According to Reed, in 1996 "tuition revenues at all two-year and four-year degree-awarding public educational institutions totaled just over $23 billion, a sum equal to only 2 percent of the Federal budget. Even if increased access were to double attendance, the cost would still be easily manageable."

While $23 billion equals only a tiny percentage of the federal budget, it would eat up a whopping 42 percent of the $54.9 billion President Bush has requested for student financial aid funding for 2003, which includes grants, loans and work-study programs. Although many of those dollars already flow to students in public institutions, if the free higher education program became as popular as Reed thinks it could and doubled tuition revenues to $46 billion, financial aid funding would have to be increased significantly to cover the full cost of the higher public education enrollment while still offering financial aid to those struggling to afford tuition at private institutions. (This year''s requested amount is only a 5 percent increase over 2002 levels.)

But you needn't worry about your taxes increasing; the program "doesn't require expanding existing federal bureaucracy." In fact, because taxpayers are currently helping families and students navigate the maze of the various loans available and helping them manage their debt, a free higher education program that renders loans unnecessary could ease the tax burden. "Simply closing corporate tax shelter loopholes introduced since 1990 would generate an estimated $60 billion annually," according to Reed, enough to cover the potential increase. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the Bush Administration or the current Congress would consider closing those loopholes.

And how does Reed think the White House would react to a proposal for free higher education? After all, this is an administration that presented itself as pro-education, then proposed eliminating the $67 million Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships program, which provides grants to low-income students, and ending the federal fixed-rate loan-consolidation program, one of the last remaining relief measures available to borrowers. He says that, "We were able to win some significant victories under the Nixon administration," including the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He also says, "Politicians respond to the pressures they feel from underneath or from above them. The most important task is to try to build a popular base for it and once that base becomes strong enough, I don't think its going to matter if the White House or Congress" is sympathetic to the idea or not. With enough pressure from the public, they'll respond.

What about state governments, who might balk because of fear that the federal government will try to influence policy or because increased enrollment in public colleges will mean increased costs for them by way of additional housing, faculty and other resources? Reed states, "We certainly aren't talking about preempting academic institutions ability to set their admissions requirements or to maintain their academic standards." And he explains that increased costs would be covered by the money states would save by no longer having to provide grants and scholarships to students in state universities. For instance, this year UMass-Amherst expects to issue more than $115 million in student aid, some of it coming from state and university sources. With students receiving free tuition, those millions could be directed elsewhere.

Again, the GI Bill sets precedent. "Tremendous expansion of college attendance over the ‘50s and ‘60s that resulted from the GI Bill certainly required substantial increases in public spending. But that spending also helps to stimulate economic growth," says Reed. He points to a 1988 study by the Congressional Subcommittee on Education and Health which found that every dollar spent educating GIs produced $6.90 in return, through economic output due to increased education and extra federal tax revenues from increased income. "Spending that stimulates investment ends up paying for itself," he says.

What Does it Mean for Massachusetts?
Perhaps not much, considering that Massachusetts is the only state where more students attend private rather than public higher education institutions. To illustrate, even though the acceptance rate at UMass-Amherst is 73 percent, the school this year enrolled 100 fewer students than they had wanted to, according to a Boston Globe article. By comparison, at least four public institutions in California have acceptance rates of less than 50 percent (UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Davis and UC-San Diego), yet in California public college students still outnumber private school students 2.2 million to 293,000.

Nonetheless, the state is still important to the campaign. Political science professor Dean Robinson and student activist Jamie Jee are leading the charge at UMass. Reed says that his group "definitely want[s] to try to get the campaign planted in Massachusetts. It's a perfect location, we've got Labor Party presence there, we all know how central higher education is to the state."

It may be perfect timing, too –– according to projections by US Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics, Massachusetts is anticipating an estimated 28 percent increase in the number of high school graduates between fall 2000 and fall of 2007. If students are allowed to put their federal dollars toward a private education as well, enrollment could skyrocket in Boston, where students at private universities outnumber those at public institutions by four to one and where colleges and universities have a $4.4 billion impact on the city''s economy. You might not be able to get out of Allston-Brighton alive.

Such thinking may be premature, however. "It's something that we've talked about, that people have raised here and there" says Reed. "If there's a groundswell of support for expanding it to private institutions then that's something we'll deal with at the time."