Forget “free college” — now embraced by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, writes Will Swaim in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece. First, “deliver universal high school education.”
The idea of free college education is seductive. There’s the fact that many Americans aren’t in the financial place they’d like to be, vis-à-vis their progeny’s impending high school graduation and the monumental costs of college tuition. From a social-justice perspective, it’s middle-class and poorer Americans who suffer most where college tuition is concerned. And there’s the wonderfully practical argument that uneducated citizens are less likely to become self-sufficient.
So why not make college “free”?
Millions of American kids are conveyor-belted through a system that does not produce math proficiency or English literacy at grade level.
You’re already familiar with the purely fiscal objection – that “free college” isn’t actually free. Somebody will have to pay for it, and that somebody is everybody who pays taxes. And you’ve likely heard the pedagogical critique – that college and university curricula are antiques that don’t adequately prepare Americans for life in a quick-changing, free-market economy.
But I’m here to say something different: Never mind free college. I’d be ecstatic if Hillary, Bernie and the Democrats pledged to deliver universal high school education.
You’re thinking we’ve already got that. But what we’ve got is nearly universal credentialing.
The dirty little secret in public education is that millions of American kids are conveyor-belted through a system that does not produce math proficiency or English literacy at grade level.
Not just credentialing: they passed the “fogging the mirror” test.