The student loan debt crisis was one of the most important issues in the 2020 election, as well as one of current President Biden’s key promises during his campaign. And for good reason-the student debt crisis so far has led 43 million borrowers to collectively owe around $1.6 trillion. Since 1970, average in-state tuition has risen over 2,000% at both public and private schools, while average student loan debt has jumped 317% on average.
In the last decade alone, tuition and fees rose 44% at four-year, private colleges and 55% at public four-year schools, where students were harder hit, according to a report by GoBankingRates.
In recognition of the student debt crisis, candidate Biden promised to provide relief to those burdened by federal student debt and offered to cancel $10,000 per borrower and remove the total burden of those attending public and historically Black colleges and universities. Unfortunately, as president, he has only managed to follow the lead of his predecessor and, under pressure, suspend student loan payments until May 1, 2022. These millions of borrowers struggle to pay their debt due to factors such as increasing tuition costs and greater federal loan availability, which are even further worsened by wage stagnation and the economic crisis which followed the COVID-19 pandemic where millions have faced issues on top of their debts economic insecurity and housing instability. There has been pressure to cancel all student loans ever since Biden took office.
However, some argue that even canceling student debt won’t end the cycle. While debt cancellation itself has been slow in its progress these past two years, many are also calling for another big initiative.
Brian Powell, a professor of sociology at Indiana University, told Changing America that although public opinion on loan forgiveness varies, his research shows overwhelming support for free tuition. When thinking about college prospects, one of the first things people consider is tuition, he added.
“If we think about the future, if we think about providing opportunities for more Americans to go to college, one of the first steps would be, making it affordable and free tuition at the public level,” said Powell, who authored “Who Should Pay: Higher Education, Responsibility and the Public,” alongside Natasha Quadlin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Back in 2015, former President Barack Obama tried and failed to waive tuition costs for the first two years of community college. Later, presidential candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders also supported tuition-free college during their runs. Now, with the current state of the student debt crisis, democrats are pushing harder than ever for community colleges to be tuition-free on a federal level.
But is it really that easy? And how well do tuition-free programs actually work?
New York’s Excelsior Scholarship — the nation’s first statewide “free college” initiative — has had a “negligible” effect on undergraduate enrollment in four-year colleges in the state, finds Hieu Nguyen, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Nguyen examined enrollment at public and private higher education institutions to gauge how students are responding to the initiative, launched in 2017 with the goal of helping more New York residents go to college. He looked at full-time undergraduate enrollment in the fall semesters between 2010 and 2017. He finds that even though students were offered free tuition, there was no statistically significant change in enrollment.
Nguyen indicates the program’s requirements might have discouraged some students from participating. “Apart from having to meet the state residency requirement to be eligible for the program, Excelsior recipients are expected to stay and work within the boundary of the state for the same number of years for which they receive the financial aid,” he explains in the paper. “While this constraint can be interpreted as fairly lax and reasonable by some, it might be viewed by others as too stringent, considering that New York has a high average cost of living relative to other states, and that Excelsior scholars are only awarded up to $5,500 per year after all other aid resources are exhausted.”
He notes that the Excelsior Scholarship is unlikely to change enrollment patterns among low-income students, whose tuition often is covered by other forms of financial aid such as federal Pell grants. Nguyen also notes the Excelsior program lacks a coaching component — unlike the Tennessee Promise program, which uses “community coaches” to help guide high school students toward graduation and immediately into college.
Student debt holders in the state of Massachusetts owe an average of $31,821 per borrower. As a whole, this adds up to over $35.9 billion. It is one of the most expensive states to get a college education. One of the most recent notable steps taken in support of tuition-free community colleges was an additional one million dollars in funding for the TFCC, (the Tuition-Free Community College program) under which qualifying low-income students who have graduated high school in Boston may get three years of free tuition at Bunker Hill Community College, MassBay Community College, or Roxbury Community College. As the battle for the cancellation of student loans continues on, initiatives like Boston’s Tuition-Free Community College program will enhance educational performance, reduce student costs, and help address these concerns upstream.
Tuition-free college initiatives have varied in their success from state to state. Although the bills in favor of it and canceling all student debt have not been passed on a federal level, there is a clear need for making high education financially accessible to millions of students across the country. The strong support behind this initiative will surely result in great changes to the way universities and their students’ education is funded.
