At Monday's debate, Hillary Clinton reiterated her promise to make college "debt free." Donald Trump wouldn't put a word in against the notion. The Republican National Committee fact-checked Clinton's claim, pointing out that due to room and board costs, her plan for free tuition wouldn't necessarily make college "debt free."
“Republicans can't just argue against free college. They also need to offer an agenda of their own.”
That's true, but it's odd to see Republicans imply that Clinton's plan isn't profligate enough. If elected, this is likely to be Clinton's signature domestic policy initiative, and Republicans seem singularly unprepared for it.
The easiest argument to make is that free college isn't actually free, it merely shifts the costs from students to taxpayers. Clinton's plan is projected to cost over half a trillion dollars. Republicans are used to arguing against spending increases, but Democrats would counter, plausibly, that the cost matters less if the investment will pay off with greater educational attainment and higher economic growth.
To make a compelling case, Republicans will need to take a step back to first principles, challenge the policy on "progressive" grounds and offer an agenda of their own.
Focusing on the spending alone misses what's really at stake. As former AEI scholar Andrew Kelly has explained, free college would fundamentally transform American higher education, taking it from a privately financed, competitive market to a government-funded and administered "public option."
Democrats may argue that the runaway cost and uneven quality of colleges demonstrates a market failure, so it's appropriate for the government to assert control. But there's plenty of reason to fear that a tuition-free, government-run system would be far worse than the status quo, especially for disadvantaged students.
Republicans should take heed of the evidence from abroad. Approximately half of the countries in the OECD offer free tuition. By and large, they have higher levels of postsecondary enrollment, yet lower levels of attainment. This suggests that a state-funded and controlled system is worse than a tuition-driven, competitive sector at getting students through graduation.
A decade ago in the United Kingdom, England and Scotland tried two different approaches: England raised tuition caps, and Scotland made tuition free. England saw its enrollment grow by 20 percent and applicants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds grow by 53 percent, while in Scotland, low-income enrollment remained anemic.
In England, the increased capital from private finance enabled colleges to expand their offerings. In Scotland, universal free tuition meant less sustained, focused investments in grant aid to low-income students. One economist calculated that the net effect of free tuition was approximately a $30 million-a-year transfer from poor students to their richer classmates.
Free college would likely prove regressive here as well. Simply in terms of spending, half of students in the bottom quintile already pay no net tuition to attend in-state public universities. Free tuition would offer these students no value, while students from families making $100-$125K would receive nearly $25,000.
What's more, even as free college expands overall enrollment, it's likely to crowd out low-income students from top-tier public universities as upper-middle class students, who could afford to attend an expensive private nonprofit college, elect to attend a public university at higher rates.
Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce projects that free tuition would have a "cascading effect" in which "less qualified candidates would get bumped down the chain into less selective and open-access colleges.
Republicans can't just argue against free college. They also need to offer an agenda of their own. The proper policy response to a dysfunctional market is not a government takeover, but rather targeted reforms to make the market more efficient.
Paul Ryan's "Better Way" takes Republicans one step there, but the gold standard was set by Jeb Bush's higher education plan, which would fundamentally reshape student loans and align incentives for colleges to serve students well.
But as things stand, Republicans seem likely to be caught flat-footed and get steam-rolled. If they want to argue against free college and for market-friendly solutions, they'll need to do their homework.
This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner
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Max Eden is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
This piece originally appeared in Washington Examiner