Universal education: A dollar spent can be $6.90 earned

Amidst all the current talk of budget cuts and the need for belt-tightening, a group of academics, community groups and unions from across the country have hit on a bold idea: What if the federal government were to make access to higher education in America available to all students, free of tuition fees? What if every American student who satisfied the academic requirements for a public college or university were guaranteed a place, without the burden of finding tens of thousands of dollars to pay for this?

Currently, children from working-class and middle-class American families pin their hopes of a college education on an elaborate system of parental savings, public or private loans and scholarships or other forms of assistance from colleges. With these various sources of funding, good students are supposed to be encouraged regardless of their financial status. If their parents can't afford to pay, then they may be eligible for special scholarships; and if the scholarships don't work out, they'll be able to borrow all the money they need for their studies. There's plenty of evidence to suggest, however, that the real situation is more problematic. Princeton and other wealthy Ivy League institutions help some poor students with full scholarships; public universities offer more affordable tuition — but it's clear that many people are falling into the gaps between the various funding sources. Some poorer students struggle to complete their degrees on time, forced to interrupt their program to earn enough money to sustain another semester or two — or forced to abandon their studies altogether. Others cannot qualify for loans, meaning that they never even enroll in a college program. Even those who complete their degrees face crippling debt burdens after graduation, the weight of their loans seriously circumscribing their career and life choices in the years ahead.

Does it have to be this way? In Europe, higher education has traditionally been free for everyone. This isn't because Europeans are more generous or altruistic than Americans, but because higher education across the Atlantic is recognized as a universal social good. Moreover, there is a precedent within American history for exactly this kind of system. The GI Bill of Rights, introduced in 1944, made access to higher education a right of veterans on their return from the war. The benefits were impressive: a dramatic period of economic growth in America, the reinvigoration of America's universities and even the democratization of American intellectual life. A 1988 Congressional report on the GI Bill suggested two amazing facts about the success of the program: First, some 40 percent of those who took up the federal government's offer would not otherwise have been able to attend college at all. Second, for every dollar spent educating that 40 percent, the federal government received a return of $6.90, principally from the extra tax revenues gained from better-educated and higher-paid graduates. Given the growing gap in earnings potential between those with college degrees and those without, it's clear that such a system could offer important economic returns as well as valuable social benefits to a new generation of eager Americans.

Assuming that the federal government agreed to pay for tuition at all two-year and four-year public institutions, the current bill for this scheme would be around $25 billion. This figure would certainly increase, since many students who currently attend private colleges would take up the offer of a free education at these public institutions. However, even assuming substantial extra enrollment, this figure is hardly insurmountable. Twenty-five billion dollars represents around two percent of the annual budget, or less than seven percent of the annual military budget. Free higher education for everyone would not require a massive rearrangement of national priorities, but a more subtle shuffling of the budget — a little less for the military, a little more enforcement of corporate taxation and a reluctance to direct billions of dollars in tax breaks and giveaways to the richest Americans.

Can it happen? President Clinton at least demonstrated that the issue is crucial to poorer Americans, offering a series of tax incentives intended to make saving for college a little easier on working families. What's been missing in recent years, though, has been the vision required to take this debate to a higher level. The campaign for free access to higher education is gaining momentum through the signatures and public statements of some of America's most prominent professors.

The signatories and proponents of this plan — academics like Michael Walzer and Eric Foner, and professional organizations like the National Conference of Black Political Scientists — have long enough memories to recall the benefits of the GI Bill, and enough foresight to see the benefits of this scheme to future generations of Americans. They deserve our support. Nicholas Guyatt, a graduate student in the history department, is from Bristol, England. He can be reached at nsguyatt@princeton.edu.