‘Free college for all’ isn’t fair to the poor

Published 4:03 am Thursday, October 8, 2015

 

Arguments that employ the word “fairness” are always suspect. Fairness is a subjective word, and it can be employed to defend any side of most issues. It’s used by both sides of the affirmative action debate, for example.

Still, fairness is a foundational value of the left. So it’s notable that fairness is now being used to argue against free college for all.

Writing in the left-leaning New Republic magazine, Matt Bruenig points out that “free college is paid for by the working class people who don’t attend.” And that, he says, is unfair.

The first problem is defining what people mean by “free” college. Right now, there are basically three very different concepts of what it means.

“For some, ‘free college’ means subsidizing tuition to zero,” Bruenig explains. “For others, it means subsidizing tuition to zero and providing living grants high enough to completely cover room and board. For still others, it appears to mean putting in place some mix of means-tested tuition subsidies, living grants, and even subsidized work-study jobs that, combined with expected parental assistance, allow nearly all students to leave college with little to no debt.”



But there are problems with each of these.

“For instance, since people who do not attend college also have housing and food costs, is it really correct to say room and board is a cost of attending college?” he asks.

Still, he adds, “of greater importance than all of those questions, however, is the more basic question about the fairness of free college as an idea.”

Bruenig points out, correctly, that college is essentially free already, at least for the poor and the determined.

“At public colleges (the type we’d likely make free), students from the poorest fourth of the population currently pay no net tuition at either two-year or four-year institutions, while also receiving an average of $3,080 and $2,320, respectively, to offset some of their annual living expenses,” he explains.

Therefore, the main beneficiaries of free college would be the ones who currently rely mostly on family resources and loans to get through school. As Bruenig notes, “primary result of such increased student benefit generosity would be to fill the pockets of richer students and their families.”

The question then becomes, who pays for these new benefits to people who frankly don’t need them? As Bruenig points out, it’s mostly the people who went to work after high school.

“Giving extra money to a class of disproportionately well-off people without securing any reciprocal benefit to poor and working-class people who so often do not attend college, all while valorizing the college student as a virtuous person individually deserving of such benefits, would be at worst destructive, and at best, totally pointless,” he writes.

And it would be unfair.

Still, we should note that fairness is a terrible standard. It’s both childish and easily co-opted. A far better standard is equality.

We should ensure everyone has a chance to get a college education. Making college free isn’t the best way to achieve that.