There Are Better Ways to Make College Affordable

States and universities are coming up with solutions that don’t involve trillions in federal spending.

By
42

President Biden’s sweeping higher education agenda has crashed into reality. His $2.9 trillion in proposals for “free” community college and student debt forgiveness aren’t going anywhere. But this would be a poor moment for conservative gloating.

Sure, the hysteria about student debt is wildly overstated and community college is already functionally free for low-income students. But, for all that, college affordability is a real issue and deserving of attention. College degrees have enormous financial and social benefits and are a prerequisite for all manner of good jobs. This means there’s a lot of incentive to attend college. It seems obviously appropriate that those who benefit from college bear some responsibility in paying a reasonable, manageable amount for an extraordinarily valuable experience. At the same time, college debt can be a crushing burden for some, especially for those who don’t complete a degree.

One response to all this is to ask whether college degrees should play such an essential role or whether they constitute an inappropriate, constitutionally suspect hiring test erected and maintained by the college-industrial complex. While there’s an obvious job-related rationale for an employer requiring an aspiring nurse to hold a nursing degree, it’s tough to make the case that would-be rental car desk clerks must first buy a bachelor’s degree. It’s an important point that deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

More prosaically, though, there are plenty of practical solutions that can be pursued right now and that don’t entail new federal outlays. Across the land, there are communities, colleges, states, and private ventures working to make college more affordable and less risky, while dodging the perverse incentives of loan forgiveness and a federal “free college” program. These localized initiatives have many advantages, including the reality that they can be carefully tailored and ensure that aid is coupled with structured support and reciprocal responsibility.

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
42
By
Comments (42)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Very interesting. We need outside the box thinking and private institutions, not a top-down imposition from the government, to solve this crisis.

    Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Kyle Funk

    I highly recommend checking out Hope College's (Holland, MI), "Pay it Forward Program" as another model. I love it as it is centered in the College's Christian mission as well.

    Collapse
  3. Mary Stine

    You picked the wrong day to pick on Amtrak, Mr. Hess. Being a train lover and watching the airlines get bailed out decade after decade while offering less and less service...while Amtrak is expected to operate on 1940's technology and track..
    As for FedEx and UPS being better than the USPS..ridiculous. Both those companies depend on the good ole post office to help them out, especially in unprofitable rural areas, every day.

    Collapse
  4. Pohl

    The author has not explained how most of these programs will help keep the costs of a 4-yr degree under control. A few seem to have a fair amount of taxpayer money involved still.
    As mentioned, accelerated learning is not very relevant to a bachelor degree, especially one in the liberal arts. I am much more interested in keeping public schools affordable for all and less in assuring that students escape “debt-free” upon graduation. A worthy goal perhaps, but seems like magic beans at this point.
    How about don’t pick a dumb major, work hard, especially at a summer job, take out some small loans if necessary, graduate in 4 years, and get a job again and pay back the loans you took to invest in your future. College is not a right, and we’re not in a utopia that can pretend otherwise.

    Collapse
    1. Anna A

      Yes, yes, and yes. Although there are some government-funded programs I do support. Like the GI Bill, for example. Or subsidies for teachers' education in certain areas.

      Collapse
      1. Pohl

        I can be persuaded of any number of government programs, just few federal ones. GI Bill is okay since young adults are often postponing their prime college years to serve. You may have to help me think of another one, though.

        Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Cthocas

    I'm skeptical of the quality of alternative higher education schemes, but given the dull intellectual caliber of the average college grad, I suppose they can't be much worse. They not only have the benefit of being more cost-efficient for the student, but market competition could force traditional colleges bloated by federal dollars to reorganize more efficiently. (I like the idea of shutting off the tap to schools which exceed specific admin-to-student ratios.)

    Simply pouring more money into schools is just further perverse incentive to continue doing what they're doing—inventing pointless administrative positions with six figure salaries while saddling students with more debt. Rather than continue to feed the insatiable wendigo of higher education bureaucracies with taxpayer dollars, I'd prefer to see the government go on the offensive against them. If universities are unfairly burdening students with loans, then universities ought to be sued and made to pay for their duplicity.

    Collapse
  6. Mathew A

    Good article, but missing is the Perdue has also held tuition flat for 10 years now. That's what the focus needs to be on is controlling costs. Primary way to do that is by keeping admin costs down.

    For students do a couple years of community college, then choose a good major at an affordable college.

    Collapse
  7. jmk789

    The main issue though is that the bloat isn't going away. If anything, it's increasing. The fact no state seems to have really understood how to stop admin bloat is kind of baffling, but appointing competent leaders who actually understand universities instead of political pals and donors would be a great starting point in addition to tackling various legal mandates and accreditation-induced bloating.

    One thing I don't understand is why things like "learning accelerators" and "competency-based learning" are not offered as part of the college experience on campuses. Combining the support structure and time horizon of a 3-4 year college experience with an intensive focus on skills and fast progress would be a great combination; students could immediately put those skills to work in their regular courses and get more experience with data-wrangling quickly rather than having to proceed at a slow slog through multiple semesters.

    The problem with "accelerators" as stand-alone programs is the lack of living support and time to really absorb the material and work on projects (crucial to any successful programmer or data scientist). There's many horror stories on HackerNews about how little actual preparation students come out of those with and how "placement" data is very misleading and hard to find (a classic informational asymmetry problem). The most successful accelerators, like the Insight program, are *extremely* selective and tend to target graduate students, not high schoolers without degrees. So I doubt that accelerators are a solution the way Hess writes, but they could be fantastic to apply to more colleges, if only people would think outside the semester/quarterly credit hour.

    I don't think the income-sharing fad is going to last, in large part because of adverse selection issues (if you're going into finance, you're probably smart enough to figure out that a regular loan would make more sense than 20% of your income for 10 years). Promise scholarships are great, especially when they can provide wrap-around support to help students succeed, but they don't seem to be systematic enough to really make a large dent (but could be great for certain local communities).

    Also, given the current outlook for Uber, I don't think Hess, JEB!, etc. will want to be trumpeting it as an example in the very near future (and they might want to reflect on why trying to apply it to education isn't working very well).

    Collapse
  8. Don Harban

    In my mind, the first crime in the Student Debt Crisis is loaning money to individuals with poor prospects for EVER completing college because of the failure of the public education that taxpayers already fund -- K-12 education, to adequately prepare individuals for college. Public funding for university education devoted to teaching what reasonably should have been taught in our public schools is essentially publicly paying for the same thing twice. It is reasonable to believe that a disproportionate number of individuals who were not academically qualified in the first place will either a) never graduate or will b) take six or more years to graduate. Over half of graduates take 6 or more years to graduate. Forty percent of individuals who enter the university system do not graduate at all. As stated elsewhere, lenders (and the universities) are perversely incentivized to fund and string along an unacceptable number of people who will never benefit economically from their "university educations".

    The first "investment" in higher education should actually be in K-12 education. Next, education in personal economics should help students AND their parents better understand the costs and benefits of financing higher education.

    The annual cost of attending public universities in my part of the country is around $25,000 per year. The average student loan debt in the US is around $40,000. Simple arithmetic would suggest that spending 6 years to obtain a 4 year degree amounts to a significant cause of high student debt. This is further aggravated when one considers the potential income lost by individuals WHILE they are attending the university.



    Collapse
  9. WYConcernedCitizen

    Solid ideas from the author. I do think, however, that there are other avenues to address: bloated administrative costs and taking classes that have nothing to do with one’s major. I agree that chemistry majors should know how to communicate their knowledge and research, but I don’t believe that English literature courses are essential for that. And vice-versa for English majors. Over a decade out from my graduate school matriculation and I’ve gained an appreciation for literature, music, and art that wasn’t from a class where I had to over analyze every paragraph.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Bill Nelson

      “…taking classes that have nothing to do with one’s major.”
      Part of what the company is hiring is a person who has critical thinking skills. Now there is some question if universities are providing this.

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      Kmregan7

      Except that one of the points of a college education is to be wholly educated. It's not just job training. It's to have educated citizens who are hopefully well-read, with a well-rounded education. So yes, english majors should have to take math and science courses to get at least a basic understanding of those fields and science majors should have to take literature courses. If we just want job training, then there are trade schools or perhaps apprenticeships or even on the job training through companies.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Blake

        Im just not sure colleges are turning out well-rounded graduates, overall. As someone who went to college when he was 28, I was shocked at how much retention seemed to be the only focus of the state school I attended. Professors would not fail anyone, which means they weren’t really being challenged to learn. That kid that never turned in a thing on time or bothered to show up got the same piece of paper I did. I think it’s inevitable that companies will eventually stop valuing that piece of paper as any indication of how good a person will be at their job and stop requiring them (it’s already sort of happening because companies are often requiring grad school, masters, etc because the BA is less indicative of a person’s skills/knowledge). I think that tipping point will make colleges work harder to make graduation mean something to businesses again, and something like ISAs will financially incentivize colleges to get their graduates high paying jobs. I’m interested to see what college looks like in a decade or so when my first kid graduates high school. I think it will probably be significantly different, but we’ll see.

        Collapse
        1. jmk789

          Welcome to the convergence between the world of higher education enrollment management, where warm bodies in seats are traded for cash and funding, and the newfound education-centric push for "equity."

          It's all part of the modern customer-centric view of education where the customer (student) is always right and the instructor must not do things like fail students or insist on deadlines lest they get accused of being "traumatizing" (by woke students) or "anti-equity" (by woke instructors) or "not a team player" (by the bottom-line, bean-counting admin). The call has gone out that enrollments and graduation rates must rise, so rise they will, even at the cost (as you point out) of devaluing the degree even further.

          Collapse
      2. Mathew A

        Yes, but a lot of requirements is BS to make sure that people are forced to take a lot of classes that they have no interest in taking.

        That how I ended up taking a stupid Japanese poetry class because it satisfied a bunch of BS requirements.

        Moreover trade schools won't meet the requirements for a lot of the better jobs. For example, you need a degree to get your CPA license.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Blake

          And what’s funny is it doesn’t have to be in accounting. Haha

          Collapse
      3. jmk789

        One thing that would help is having classes that are specialized for non-majors. I do agree that, to go against Marco Rubio, plumbers should learn about Plato, but such a course should be taught differently than the default "Plato for Future Philosophy Majors" course that's usually what you'd find now (and would probably be a lot more fun/interesting). I've seen some schools do this with science classes in particular and it seems to work well, especially when you can integrate multiple courses into a coherent sequence. For instance, a "Humanities" integrated track for non-majors would be particularly useful since it could combine multiple disciplines; but hence, that's why it's unlikely to happen because it requires the cooperation/giving up enrollment from multiple departments.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Cecelia Grace

          A number of colleges are developing those! For instance, the Great Books program is meant to be open to any major. There's a surprising number of colleges that offer a GBK general education track.
          The one caveat here is that the general education classes can SAY "open to anyone" on the tin as much as they like, but they also have to be TAUGHT that way. I'm currently in a gen ed astronomy class that is definitely being taught to the nonexistent physics majors in the room and I would be struggling had I not taken this exact class in high school.

          Collapse
  10. Avatar photo
    O,W.L.

    How about restricting state and Federal financial aid (Pell grants, loans, etc.) to public colleges and universities? All of the debt horror stories involve students who took out loans to attend either low quality for profit colleges or expensive private universities, of which some are notorious for "gapping" or not meeting full financial need, which then forces students to take out private loans to meet the full cost of attendance. I don't think most taxpayers intend their funds to support kids who choose to attend a school that costs $75K per year. Even with loans, those dollars could support several students at a public four year school.

    States could also, you know, restore funding to public colleges and universities so that tuition doesn't have to be such a large percentage of their revenues.

    I don't object to free community college--there are a lot of useful programs that provide a path to a decent occupation. I'm old enough to remember when those types of programs were available in high school, but it seems that in the past 20 years or so the relentless focus on getting kids to go to college reduced the focus and resources on occupational programs in high school.

    Collapse
Load More