Skepticism toward Obama's Free Tuition Community College Plan

One week ago, President Obama unveiled plans to make two years of community college free for responsible students; students who attend at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make comfortable progress toward completing their program. The plan also requires community colleges to “adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes”, Federal funding will cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college, with states contributing the rest. Overall, the program will cost nearly $60 billion over a ten year period; revenue of which President Obama has not mentioned a source. Despite this public investment, free community college tuition will exacerbate currently bloated administration levels and enrollment, low success rates, and tuition at community colleges.

             

Firstly, the program will be subsidizing an already substandard community college system. Federal data demonstrates that 31% of first-time, full-time students graduate within three years at two-year colleges. However, a large percentage of community college students are nontraditional students who may be taking remedial classes, working part-time or full-time, or who are older, which may explain this low rate. Nevertheless, what happens when these students, who will receive free-tuition if they follow the program’s conditions, drop out suddenly? Certainly, the taxpayers and government would lose billions of dollars if they subsidize poor and negligible students. 

In addition, these actions will likely increase the cost of community college tuition drastically, which is what occurred to higher education in the last 3 decades after the federal government created various grant  and loan programs to assist collegebound students. The money may exist for the programs today, but will it exist as a stable and affordable source at the prospects of higher tuition in the future?

When viewing the effects of government assistance of college students, there has been greater access to college for nearly everyone, but there have also been proven negative effects. Colleges respond to yearly increases in governmental education aid through expanding facilities, the number of administrators and staff, and other investments; all derived from increased tuition. Who pays for this tuition; students, who must borrow burdening loans to cover the enormous cost of college, and the government that created and perpetuates this problem through its subsidization of higher education. We need an end to these nearsighted subsidies or else face the devaluation of most degrees and restrictions on college access to those who will be able to pay the eventual 100k yearly tuitions.