College affordability has become a hot-button issue this campaign, with both candidates spending more time talking about reducing rising student debt loads and tuition rates than President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney did four years ago.
Part of that attention is due to the rise of Bernie Sanders’ campaign during the Democratic primary. Sanders’ audacious plan for free college, paid for in part by closing corporate tax loopholes, captured the enthusiasm of young voters nationwide.
Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have unveiled detailed, if less bold, proposals to combat the rising cost of higher education.
Clinton’s plan is centered around some of Sanders’ key policies. The most significant portion is a proposal to eliminate tuition at public colleges and universities for families making under $125,000 a year. The campaign said that this would cover 80 percent of Wisconsin households.
The free tuition model would privilege states that provide a high level of funding for their universities in an effort to combat declining state support for their public colleges. It is unclear what that would mean for a state such as Wisconsin, which slashed $250 million from the UW System in the most recent biennium budget.
“This is a partnership,” Clinton said at a rally in Durham, N.H., last month. “We are setting this up to work with the states and make it clear … that states that are willing to work with us to increase their contributions are going to be rewarded by the program, and states that are not, we think, will be under political pressure to do that.”
There are difficulties, however, in providing free tuition for a majority of American families. How best to subsidize the tuition is a central question, allowing students in states with varying tuition prices to get similar levels of support. One way to do so would be to subsidize tuition per student, much like Medicaid or many other federal education programs.
But states do not have to participate in these programs if they don’t want to or believe the cost is too high. States like Wisconsin who have been reluctant to expand Medicaid could simply decide not to buy in on free college as well.
Free college at public universities could also harm their private peers.
“Many private institutions would likely be forced to become more elitist and less diverse as their dependence on students that could pay full tuition becomes even greater as price-sensitive students shift to public competitors,” a report from Georgetown University on Clinton’s proposal said.
Trump has blasted Clinton’s proposal as being loaded with “unintended consequences.” He unveiled his own plan at a rally in Columbus last month.
“Students should not be asked to pay more on the debt than they can afford,” Trump said. “And the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.”
His plan would cap loan repayment at 12.5 percent of a person’s income and forgive any remaining debt after 15 years.
He also called on colleges to trim fat, arguing there “aren’t enough incentives” to reduce spending on facilities and executive pay of presidents or chancellors. Trump implied that he would revisit the tax-exempt status of institutions that don’t adequately cut expenses.
But experts say Trump’s plan is not perfect and does not address rising tuition rates across the country.
“Given the increasing risk to students in terms of loans and to taxpayers in terms of loan forgiveness, we have to grapple with up-front costs,” Amy Laitinen, director for higher education at the New America Foundation, told the Washington Post, “which means looking at the role of states and the need for incentives to deal with both cost and quality.”
Regardless of who wins the White House, student debt relief figures to remain a key issue throughout the next four years.
“It is very, very hard for young people,” Trump said in his speech. “It is probably the question I get more than any other question, outside of defense.”
