MAKING HIGHER EDUCATION AFFORDABLE
THE WORLD IS CHANGING
In the twenty-first century, a public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The world is changing, technology is changing, our economy is changing. If we are to succeed in the highly competitive global economy and have the best-educated workforce in the world, public colleges and universities must become tuition-free.
College affordability and student debt are in crisis. Young people graduate from college with huge debts. They should be looking forward to building independent lives and careers, but they are weighed down by financial burdens. Graduation should mark a joyous new beginning, not the start of an anxiety-ridden, decades-long financial bind.
One of the truly remarkable aspects of my presidential campaign—and quite frankly, one that took me by surprise—was how much the campaign resonated with young people. These vibrant voters were concerned about many issues, but the issue that was so often uppermost in their minds was the ever-escalating cost of college and the scourge of student debt. Whether they were thinking about attending college, were currently enrolled, or had already graduated, they were deeply worried that they would be saddled with an unsustainable amount of debt for years to come. Unfortunately, they were right to worry.
Unlike other types of personal debt that have been decreasing in recent years, student debt has been steadily increasing. In all, 44 million people—current students, graduates, and those who left college before graduating—now owe more than $1.3 trillion in student loans. This is more than five times the amount of student debt in 2004, and more than all credit card and auto loan debt in the United States combined. And an increasing number of those 44 million people will carry their student debt throughout their entire lives.
The high cost of college and student debt affects not only those who are in school and their families but low-income and working-class families who are simply not able to send their kids to college. Today in America, hundreds of thousands of bright young people who have the desire and the ability to get a college education will not be able to do so because their families lack the money. This is a tragedy for those young people and their families, but it is also a tragedy for our nation. How many scientists, engineers, businesspeople, teachers, doctors, and nurses are we losing because higher education in this country is unaffordable for so many?
It is disastrous not just for the individuals affected but also for the future of our economy and our economic competitiveness. The United States used to lead the world in the percentage of people who graduated from college, which is one of the reasons that we have the strongest economy in the world. Today, that is no longer the case. We now rank fifteenth in the number of young people who will graduate from college, and we’re falling further and further behind. Does anyone really not believe that this will have severe economic consequences for the future of our economy and our way of life?
I believe that higher education in America should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. That means that everyone, regardless of their station in life, should be able to get all the education they want and need.
If every parent in this country, every teacher in this country, and every student in this country understand that if kids study hard and do well in school they will be able to go to college, regardless of their family’s income, that will have a radical impact on primary and secondary education in the United States—and on the lives of millions of families. That’s what we can accomplish by making public colleges and universities tuition-free and making certain that all Americans, no matter their economic status, have the opportunity for a higher education.
Education has always been—perhaps more than any other institution in our society—the great equalizer. Education, especially in a rapidly evolving economy, is how people qualify for better jobs and how they do well at them. It is the key to solving many of the serious problems of economic, racial, and gender inequality plaguing our society.
There was a time, forty or fifty years ago, when many people could graduate from high school and move right into a decent-paying job with good benefits. Strong unions offered apprenticeships, and a large manufacturing sector provided opportunities for those without an advanced degree. A couple with a sole breadwinner could buy a home, raise a family, and send their kids to college. That was the American dream. Those days are pretty much over. With the loss of some sixty thousand factories in the last fifteen years, and the decline of the trade union movement, it is harder and harder for workers to make it into the middle class.
Today, perhaps the most important pathway to the middle class runs through higher education. While not all middle-class jobs in today’s economy require a college degree, an increasing number do. People need a higher education to make it into the middle class and successfully compete in a global economy.
While it is my view that all students in this country, regardless of income, have the right to a higher education if they have the ability and desire to obtain one, it is important to take a hard look at why the cost of college is rising so rapidly. And it is also important to point out that the reason the cost of higher education is increasing is not that colleges are spending any more per student. Other factors are driving the steep cost curve.
One of them is the increasing cost of health insurance for staff and faculty. The fact that we have the most expensive health care system in the world significantly impacts college costs, just as it does any large business. Another major cost driver is the proliferation of administrative positions at colleges and universities. Just between 1993 and 2009, administrative positions grew by more than 60 percent, more than ten times the growth rate of tenured professors, and at many times the salary. As higher education becomes more corporate-like and bureaucratic, more bureaucrats are needed to run them. Exactly how much do students benefit by having, in some cases, dozens of vice presidents of this or that, each earning hundreds of thousands of dollars or more? Not very much.
Another reason college educations are becoming so expensive is that colleges are increasingly being run as businesses competing for market share. To become more attractive to prospective students, colleges spend huge amounts of money on fancy student centers and dorms, state-of-the-art gyms and sports stadiums, and countless other campus amenities. While this trend is certainly more exaggerated at private schools, public colleges and universities are not immune to big spending on bells and whistles that drive up tuition while providing little or no academic benefit to students.
In the richest country in the history of the world, every student who has the desire and the ability should be able to go to college.
TWEET BY BERNIE SANDERS, APRIL 13, 2017, 9:38 AM
Further, the cost of college textbooks has risen tenfold since 1977. The average full-time university student in the United States now pays more than $1,200 each year just for books and supplies. This exorbitant increase is driven by stranglehold contracts with book publishers that restrict digital access to their products and release newer and more expensive editions every few years, which prevents students from using less-expensive used books. Let’s call it what it is: a racket.
The high cost of college isn’t just bad for students and their families, it’s bad for our economy, too. While a college education will eventually pay off for many people, the large amount of debt incurred for that education has a real and immediate impact on the standard of living of millions, and on our national economy. Growing student debt is one of the major reasons why young people are delaying getting married and having kids, and why families are putting off buying homes, starting businesses, and saving for retirement. This, in turn, is slowing overall economic growth. And less growth means fewer jobs and less tax revenue to pay for the services Americans want and deserve.
You would think—for the sake of the overall economy, at least, if not for the students themselves—that government policy would allow people to get out from under unsustainable student debt by refinancing at lower interest rates. You would think that Americans carrying student debt would be able to refinance it like they can their home mortgages, right? Wrong. Incredibly, most student debt in this country cannot be refinanced, even if the loan was originally made at a very high interest rate.
Unlike other forms of debt, student loans are very difficult to discharge, even in bankruptcy. In fact, it is much easier for a big bank or corporation to declare insolvency and be forgiven for outstanding debts than it is for an individual going through personal bankruptcy to be discharged from a student loan.
DISCHARGE A LOAN: to release a borrower from the obligation to pay a loan
So what happens if a borrower can’t pay a student loan? Some borrowers have had their tax refunds withheld. Some student loans are sent to aggressive collection agencies that hound borrowers to the point of harassment. And some borrowers have even been arrested. America rightfully outlawed debtors’ prisons in the mid-nineteenth century, but some cities and states are issuing contempt-of-court warrants that get around those rules.
Free college tuition is not a radical idea. In Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Mexico, public colleges and universities are free. In Denmark, not only is college tuition-free, but people who go actually get paid. In Germany the public colleges are free not only for Germans, but also for international students, which is why every year more than 4,500 students from the United States enroll in German universities. For a token fee of around $200 per semester, an American student can earn a degree from one of the premier universities in Europe.
Governments in those countries understand the value of investing in their young people. They know that these students will acquire the knowledge and skills to strengthen their countries and become the teachers, architects, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs of the future. They realize that by allowing all qualified students—regardless of income—to achieve a higher education, they are making a down payment on their countries’ economic prosperity.
CRACKING DOWN ON FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS
Another problematic student loan practice is being perpetrated by the growing number of for-profit “career” schools that effectively see federal student aid as a profit center to exploit, without regard to the quality of the education they provide.
There is no question that some career colleges do a fine job of preparing students for employment in specialty fields. However, far too often these for-profit businesses lure students based on confusing or misleading information and exaggerated claims, and then charge excessive tuition and fees for poor-quality training in occupations that are either low-paying or offer few jobs. The now shuttered Trump University, which scammed thousands of people seeking to learn the inside secrets of real estate deals, is just the tip of the iceberg.
A college degree today is the equivalent of a high school degree 50 years ago. We need tuition-free public colleges.
TWEET BY BERNIE SANDERS,
OCTOBER 26, 2015, 8:20 AM
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, of which I have long been a member, found that these for-profit schools spend, on average, about 30 percent more per student on marketing and recruiting than on actual instruction. It should not be surprising that students graduating from these for-profit schools have significantly lower rates of employment in their fields of study and higher rates of student loan default compared with their peers graduating from public and nonprofit schools.
But many of these schools don’t care whether the students fail after they graduate—their chief concern is making a profit off taxpayer-funded student loans.
The U.S. Department of Education has begun to crack down on the most egregious and predatory practices of for-profit schools. New federal regulations require career colleges to be much more transparent in their marketing and to make real efforts to improve employment outcomes for students, or else risk losing access to federal student aid. These “gainful employment” regulations, while not perfect, will increase accountability at for-profit career colleges and help students avoid becoming unreasonably burdened by student loan debt they cannot repay.
That’s a good start, but we can and should go much further in terms of cracking down on these colleges that too often prey on students while making an outrageous profit off taxpayer money.
BETTER PREPARING STUDENTS FOR THE FUTURE
We also have to better prepare students before they go to college by improving our primary and secondary schools, which too often are failing our youth, especially in low-income and minority communities.
Not everybody wants to go to college, and not everybody needs to go to college. This country needs carpenters, plumbers, welders, bricklayers, ironworkers, mechanics, and many other professions that pay workers, especially those in unions, good wages for doing very important, skilled work. As part of a new approach to higher education and vocational training, we must provide those students with the education and training they need, regardless of the incomes of their families.
There are many other issues affecting primary and secondary education that are beyond the scope of this book. These include the effects of intergenerational poverty that disadvantage many low-income children, massive disinvestment in minority communities, lack of adequate after-school and summer programming, the opioid crisis that is ripping apart both urban and rural communities, and the chronic underfunding of schools. Suffice it to say that as a society, we are failing far too many of our children. These young people are the future of our country. To my mind, we have both a moral obligation and an economic imperative to do better.
MOBILIZE
Donate gently used or new clothing to Dress for Success, dressforsuccess.org. The organization helps empower women’s economic independence by providing professional attire and support to women entering the workforce.
Join the movement to inspire young people everywhere to build the future we all imagine for them at the Future Project, thefutureproject.org.
Donate time to be a Big Brother or Big Sister (bbbs.org) through professionally supported, one-to-one mentor relationships with children.
Donate to, advocate for, or volunteer with Reach Out and Read (reachoutandread.org) and foster literacy by ensuring that young children have maximum exposure to books.
iMentor (imentor.org) pairs college-educated mentors with high school students from low-income communities for at least three years in its efforts to foster more first-generation college graduates.
