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Let Them Eat Icing
The false promise of free college tuition
In his recently released “ An Economic Agenda for American Families: Empowering Working and Middle Class Americans to Thrive,” Mayor Pete Buttigieg joined the ranks of Democratic presidential contenders who propose some sort of reduced or free college tuition for middle and working class students.
Opponents of free college tuition ask how the government will fund these programs. That’s not the issue. As the old saying suggests, “If you think education is expensive, try paying for ignorance.”
All of the plans I’ve seen have one fatal flaw:
Because of pervasive racial and economic inequalities in our pre K-12 educational system, free college tuition will help few poor and minority students. The first and most critical step is to redress existing inequalities, starting with the earliest grades. Ignoring the effects of systemic discrimination while providing free college tuition / expenses may actually widen the income gap between the disadvantaged and the advantaged.
A majority of students entering community colleges and many students entering four-year colleges are unprepared for college-level classes and must take non-credit pre-college (aka “developmental” or “remedial”) classes, usually in math, reading, and / or composition (writing) before being admitted into…
