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Free Tuition Is Not the Solution
There’s another alternative to time and debt misspent in college: an aggressive return to public vocational schools.
By INGRID EISENSTADTER
May 28, 2016 / BARRON'S
As the Democratic presidential hopefuls campaigned, they found a powerful message that resonated with many people: enormous increases in government support for college.
Bernie Sanders proposes free tuition at public colleges and universities. Hillary Clinton counters with “debt-free tuition” at public colleges and universities, meaning that she wouldn’t pay to send the kids of rich families to college for free.
But there’s a problem: These plans are guaranteed to escalate already high dropout rates, as more and more students start their higher education with no financial risk to themselves. They will, however, have ever greater academic risk, since 75% of community-college students now start their “higher education” with remedial reading and math classes, and less than 10% graduate on time.
The ratio of debt to inability that causes students to drop out is unknown, but the more the government lures unqualified students into the groves of academe, the more students will be falling out of the trees.
Statistics about accumulation of student debt are complex, but debts are mostly owed by people with manageable loan payments and by graduate students who will make a good living from their advanced degrees.
What we and the candidates don’t know are the actual numbers of hardworking qualified students struggling with debt, versus the number of unqualified students enabled to borrow recklessly. The solution—reallocating billions in federal and state funds and increasing Wall Street taxes—is running way ahead of our understanding of the problem.
LARGELY UNMENTIONED is the fact that in most states, public college tuition is inexpensive. In many, it is dirt cheap.
The College Board, which administers the college-admissions SAT, annually publishes its data collection, called “Trends in College Pricing.” In last year’s survey, tuition and fees at two-year public colleges cost $4,000 a year or less in 25 states ($1,423 in California), and less than $5,000 in most others. Four-year public colleges cost $10,000 or less in 34 states.
According to this report—other organizations offer other estimates—after 40 years of full-time work, four-year college graduates will have earned an average of $1.66 million; two-year grads, $1.24 million; and high school grads, $1 million. That’s $240,000 more income for the $8,000 investment in an associate’s degree—an investment return that easily beats the Street.
All students have to do to keep their bills down is enroll locally and live at home. So, yes, they will have to put up with their parents for another few years, but this strategy eliminates the cost of room and board and out-of-state fees, which easily can double their costs.
Adult students who don’t have this option, and students who want to live on campus anyway, should proceed with caution. They should take a long and patient look around a very complex system to find the grants and scholarships available to them and not just fling themselves into colleges willing to take their loan money.
More than $180 billion in grants and scholarships are available to students annually, so for many even these low costs drop. Federal Pell grants amounted to more than $30 billion in the 2014-15 school year, in addition to state grants ($10 billion), institutional grants and scholarships ($40 billion), and billions more from nonprofit foundations, profit-making companies, membership organizations, and employers. Add $15 billion in federal tax credits and deductions. Add more than $13 billion for veterans and military personnel. Add $1.6 billion more for work-study programs. Pell grants alone range up to $5,815 per student annually for as many as six years.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly between a third and a half of all public college students got grants or scholarships or both in 2012. Half of these students also got loans, and this is where the trouble starts: Many never graduate.
When students drop out, whether at their own expense or the taxpayers, the earnings benefit of a completed degree plummets or disappears altogether. According to the 2013 “American Dream 2.0” study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, only 54% of students in all colleges graduate after six years. At four-year institutions with open admissions, only a third of students graduate within six years.
Rather than blaming teachers for students who fail, let’s blame parents—and help them. Most of a child’s brain capacity is developed by age 5, so the dropout problem actually first rears its head in kindergarten. By then, children whose parents have failed to consistently expose them to conversation and reading are already behind, a problem that can hinder them for the rest of their lives.
One form of help can be found at the Website of the nonprofit You Tell Me Stories, where parents can download free apps of interactive e-books for pre-kindergartners, with voice-overs so even poorly schooled parents can read with their children and make a lifelong investment for them.
There’s another alternative to time and debt misspent in college: an aggressive return to public vocational high schools like the one I went to. I have classmates who never went to college who have successful careers anyway, such as violinist, dancing-school owner, drummer, Broadway star. This was the long gone School of Performing Arts, the Fame school, its offspring now an academic high school at Lincoln Center in New York City. There you have to conquer trigonometry to graduate when you could instead be soaring cross stage in a grand jeté.
These schools—also known as career or technical high schools—teach students trades, crafts, and technical skills alongside the usual algebra, geography, and foreign-language classes. The difference is that if they flunk algebra and can’t or won’t memorize foreign-language declensions, they still will learn job skills, including those that cannot be exported. They can fill jobs as electricians, automotive-repair techs, chefs, paralegals, nurses’ aides, and many more—skills that will grow in value as time passes.
INGRID EISENSTADTER is director of grants for a family foundation in New York.
There’s another alternative to time and debt misspent in college: an aggressive return to public vocational schools.
By INGRID EISENSTADTER
May 28, 2016 / BARRON'S
As the Democratic presidential hopefuls campaigned, they found a powerful message that resonated with many people: enormous increases in government support for college.
Bernie Sanders proposes free tuition at public colleges and universities. Hillary Clinton counters with “debt-free tuition” at public colleges and universities, meaning that she wouldn’t pay to send the kids of rich families to college for free.
But there’s a problem: These plans are guaranteed to escalate already high dropout rates, as more and more students start their higher education with no financial risk to themselves. They will, however, have ever greater academic risk, since 75% of community-college students now start their “higher education” with remedial reading and math classes, and less than 10% graduate on time.
The ratio of debt to inability that causes students to drop out is unknown, but the more the government lures unqualified students into the groves of academe, the more students will be falling out of the trees.
Statistics about accumulation of student debt are complex, but debts are mostly owed by people with manageable loan payments and by graduate students who will make a good living from their advanced degrees.
What we and the candidates don’t know are the actual numbers of hardworking qualified students struggling with debt, versus the number of unqualified students enabled to borrow recklessly. The solution—reallocating billions in federal and state funds and increasing Wall Street taxes—is running way ahead of our understanding of the problem.
LARGELY UNMENTIONED is the fact that in most states, public college tuition is inexpensive. In many, it is dirt cheap.
The College Board, which administers the college-admissions SAT, annually publishes its data collection, called “Trends in College Pricing.” In last year’s survey, tuition and fees at two-year public colleges cost $4,000 a year or less in 25 states ($1,423 in California), and less than $5,000 in most others. Four-year public colleges cost $10,000 or less in 34 states.
According to this report—other organizations offer other estimates—after 40 years of full-time work, four-year college graduates will have earned an average of $1.66 million; two-year grads, $1.24 million; and high school grads, $1 million. That’s $240,000 more income for the $8,000 investment in an associate’s degree—an investment return that easily beats the Street.
All students have to do to keep their bills down is enroll locally and live at home. So, yes, they will have to put up with their parents for another few years, but this strategy eliminates the cost of room and board and out-of-state fees, which easily can double their costs.
Adult students who don’t have this option, and students who want to live on campus anyway, should proceed with caution. They should take a long and patient look around a very complex system to find the grants and scholarships available to them and not just fling themselves into colleges willing to take their loan money.
More than $180 billion in grants and scholarships are available to students annually, so for many even these low costs drop. Federal Pell grants amounted to more than $30 billion in the 2014-15 school year, in addition to state grants ($10 billion), institutional grants and scholarships ($40 billion), and billions more from nonprofit foundations, profit-making companies, membership organizations, and employers. Add $15 billion in federal tax credits and deductions. Add more than $13 billion for veterans and military personnel. Add $1.6 billion more for work-study programs. Pell grants alone range up to $5,815 per student annually for as many as six years.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly between a third and a half of all public college students got grants or scholarships or both in 2012. Half of these students also got loans, and this is where the trouble starts: Many never graduate.
When students drop out, whether at their own expense or the taxpayers, the earnings benefit of a completed degree plummets or disappears altogether. According to the 2013 “American Dream 2.0” study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, only 54% of students in all colleges graduate after six years. At four-year institutions with open admissions, only a third of students graduate within six years.
Rather than blaming teachers for students who fail, let’s blame parents—and help them. Most of a child’s brain capacity is developed by age 5, so the dropout problem actually first rears its head in kindergarten. By then, children whose parents have failed to consistently expose them to conversation and reading are already behind, a problem that can hinder them for the rest of their lives.
One form of help can be found at the Website of the nonprofit You Tell Me Stories, where parents can download free apps of interactive e-books for pre-kindergartners, with voice-overs so even poorly schooled parents can read with their children and make a lifelong investment for them.
There’s another alternative to time and debt misspent in college: an aggressive return to public vocational high schools like the one I went to. I have classmates who never went to college who have successful careers anyway, such as violinist, dancing-school owner, drummer, Broadway star. This was the long gone School of Performing Arts, the Fame school, its offspring now an academic high school at Lincoln Center in New York City. There you have to conquer trigonometry to graduate when you could instead be soaring cross stage in a grand jeté.
These schools—also known as career or technical high schools—teach students trades, crafts, and technical skills alongside the usual algebra, geography, and foreign-language classes. The difference is that if they flunk algebra and can’t or won’t memorize foreign-language declensions, they still will learn job skills, including those that cannot be exported. They can fill jobs as electricians, automotive-repair techs, chefs, paralegals, nurses’ aides, and many more—skills that will grow in value as time passes.
INGRID EISENSTADTER is director of grants for a family foundation in New York.