, Columnist
The U.S. Needs More Colleges
Free tuition is a boon to low-income students. But that won't increase the pool of educated workers.
More needed.
Photographer: David L. Ryan/Boston Globe/getty imagesThis article is for subscribers only.
The idea of free college, one of the pillars of Bernie Sanders’ unsuccessful presidential bid, hasn't been discarded in the wake of the 2016 election. Just this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo released a plan to make all public colleges in that state free for residents whose families earn less than $125,000 a year.
The policy isn't all that radical. It’s actually pretty similar to what selective private schools such as Stanford and Harvard already do. At those schools, students from rich families subsidize those from more modest backgrounds (like mine). In New York’s case, a lot of the subsidy will also come from foreign students, who pay full sticker price.