Policymakers should instead embrace our existing, well-functioning student-aid system and improve upon it.
Former vice president Joe Biden made a stunning announcement last month: In a major leftward move, he would back Senator Bernie Sanders’s original free-college plan for families earning up to $125,000 a year.
News of this radical policy shift was lost amid coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now there is a risk that it will escape the scrutiny it deserves.
There are at least two broad arguments against the Biden free-college plan. First, the problem it seeks to solve — unaffordable tuition at public universities — is extremely overstated. Free-college supporters argue that tuition at these public institutions — the only colleges covered by Biden’s plan — has risen to unaffordable levels, especially for students from low- and middle-income families. But this claim is usually based on published “sticker prices” at universities rather than the net prices that students actually pay after their financial aid is applied. In other words, free-college advocates measure college affordability before factoring in existing policies meant to make college more affordable.