Warren’s College-Loan Plan Is a Decent Start
It would help ease the crushing financial burden on too many young Americans.
U.S. senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has released a bold plan for college affordability. The proposal has three basic components — making public universities free, providing more funding for historically black colleges and universities, and cancelling large amounts of student debt.
The idea of free public universities is something I’ve argued against in the past. Warren’s plan would use government funding to replace the lost tuition, but this system might not allow universities to increase their expenditures in the future to meet the needs of research or educational-quality improvements. It would also make them politically vulnerable to budget cuts. In the long term, this could compromise the quality of the U.S.'s public universities, which are now among the world’s best. It could also encourage universities to shift admissions toward kids from well-off families who tend to make large alumni donations — exactly the opposite of what the system needs. A better idea would be to expand financial assistance and admissions access to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and make community colleges free.