Why Tuition-Free College Makes Sense

The tuition squeeze on young Americans results largely from severe reductions in state and local funding for public colleges and universities, usually initiated by conservative, budget-cutting governments. Since 2008 alone, state funding for public universities has dropped 16 percent.  During that same period, state funding for SUNY’s 64 campuses dropped by 28 percent.  Indeed, there is considerable question as to whether public colleges and universities are still public institutions, for most of their costs—once covered by government funding—are now met by student tuition.  Today, state funding covers only about 30 percent of SUNY’s costs; students pick up the remaining 70 percent. 

This campus austerity program hurts not only students, but the entire educational process.  Anxious to maintain or expand operations despite declining levels of government funding, college and university administrators cut campus costs by replacing tenured and tenure-line faculty with rootless, powerless, low-paid part-timers (adjuncts) and underpaid full-timers in temporary positions (contingents).  In 1969, tenured and tenure-track faculty held three out of four teaching positions.  By 2013, this “regular” faculty held one out of five.  Faculty morale and the quality of education have plummeted. 

In addition, campus administrators, faced with declining income, are increasingly inclined to accept funding from wealthy individuals and corporations that are reshaping higher education to serve their interests.  From 2005 to 2013, two rightwing billionaires, Charles and David Koch, spent $68 million funding the kinds of programs they wanted on 308 U.S. college and university campuses.  In New York State, when Governor Andrew Cuomo initiated Start-Up NY, a scheme to provide a tax-free haven to businesses that moved onto or near public (and some private) college campuses, there was never any question about how SUNY’s chancellor and other administrators would respond.  Instead of resisting this business takeover of university facilities and mission, they became leading cheerleaders for it. 

In these circumstances, free tuition would, at the least, restore educational opportunity to millions of Americans and lift the terrible burden of debt from the shoulders of young people.  In addition, by bringing large numbers of new students and their funding to public colleges and universities, it would reduce the incentive for administrators to turn the faculty into powerless, impoverished migrant laborers.  Indeed, a surge of fully-funded students might even provide administrators with the backbone to resist the growing corporate takeover of higher education.  Furthermore, although private colleges might resent this enhanced funding of their public competitors, the resulting competition for students might encourage them to decrease their astronomical tuition, thus providing them with a more economically diverse student body. 

Overall, then, tuition-free college makes a lot of sense, which explains why Americans established it in the first place.