Higher education should be free and available to everyone. Just as K-12 public school is free for all, so too should a four-year college education cost nothing in the United States. I’m not talking about just tuition here. Room and board should also be fully covered. Graduate school, for those interested, should also be available and free of charge for all those who wish to attend. In addition, one hundred percent of student loan debt, whether federal, private, or for graduate school, should be cancelled by the United States government.
I thought about sending out this newsletter with just that above paragraph. There is power in keeping your arguments short and sweet. Besides my various ideas about rhetorical aesthetics and effectiveness, I’m sure that 99% of the people who read Dang Dude, agree with me. Nothing like preaching to the choir and calling it a day.
I decided against that, however. Maybe someone in the 1% will want to learn more after reading my piece. Maybe someone else will share it, spreading the word. Maybe a third person will learn something they didn’t know before. Definitely someone will think I’m wrong. But hey, better than just patting myself on the back and calling it a day.
My main argument for totally free higher ed comes from a moral place. Before we get to that however, a little bit of history.
In 1968, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost for a year’s tuition at a four-year public college was $329. Moving forward to 2019, prices increased three thousand and nine percent to $10,230. Yes, 3,009%. That’s just tuition. Room and board at a lot of school equals or surpasses tuition costs. This isn’t a simple case of prices keeping up with inflation. That three thousand percent far outstrips whatever price increase inflation would have forced.
The reasons for this are myriad. I won’t go into all of them here, but the biggest factor is that state and federal funding for higher ed has disappeared down a black hole. Red and blue states across the country have cut funding for higher education in the name of fiscal austerity and balancing budgets. Neoliberal financial policies quickly targeted higher ed funding as a prime area to cut. I won’t get into the problems with how modern universities use their money, cause that’s more of a symptom than the problem, but needless to say, spending priorities do not often place “reducing tuition” at the top of the list.
Short, incomplete, and unfinished history lesson over. Mostly. I might come back to something later.
I want to focus on one specific reason for making universities free. Public higher education – this next clause is something I believe from the tips of my recently cut toenails to the ends of my not recently trimmed head hair – is a moral necessity. The inverse is also true. Denying anyone the ability to further their education for whatever reason, is a moral evil.
Let’s take a look at the positive case first. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a huge document in the history of human rights, dedicates its 26 Article to the topic of education.[1] It states:
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Ignoring the problematic third subsection, it would appear that I have gone far beyond the calls of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fantastic. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published in 1948. It’s 2020, things have changed. Think of the UDHR as a C, passing, adequate, but not amazing. Nothing wrong with going for the A. Especially when it comes to human rights.
Clumsy metaphors aside, education is good for humanity, and for individuals. The ability to pursue intellectual curiosity in an environment specifically built for that purpose is a fundamental human need. Asking questions, and being able to come up with the answers to them, is part of what makes us who we are. Without that we become little more than unquestioning sponges, adrift in a sea of various stimuli, reacting without purpose. We lose what makes us human. The more people are able to understand the world around them, and are given the tools, time, and ability to do so, the more fulfilled we become. Our best possible lives can only be lived with access to education. Of course, not everyone wants to go to college. That’s fine. I’m not arguing that everyone should go to college. Just that it should be available to everyone.
From this, of course, follows other economic and national arguments. I do not wish to follow those. Education has long played a role in the building of economies and nations. Just read like one sentence of Adorno or Foucault or what postmodernist you hold in the highest esteem and they’ll probably talk about the role of schools in building the state. One of the reasons professional historians came into being is that newly constructed states needed to convince people that they had a reason to exist. There’s that other history lesson I mentioned earlier. History classes the world over are all about reinforcing national myths. I do not think the current US national project needs any more support than it already has. Similarly, the idea that education serves solely an economic purpose is rampant. More education makes better workers. For me, these reasons are not why I support free higher education. Education for education’s sake, is the goal, not undergirding state power or the economy.
I mentioned that not providing education is a moral evil. Forcing people into massive amounts of debt, which the US does, in the name of a better life is unconscionable. No amount of laying off avocado toast, or getting more roommates, or working two, three, or four jobs will get people out of life-long debt. Debt taken in the name of getting a better life. But US specific reasons are not the only ones to get rid of college tuition. Prohibiting education has long been a tool of colonizers, fascists, and, despots. At the end of the Dutch occupation of Indonesia, only 5% of Indonesians were able to read and write in their native languages. Not allowing people to access their culture, or the ability to read, write, and understand the world around them is a crime against humanity.
Thinking about this, there seems to be only one real critique. People who argue that campuses are hotbeds of Marxist liberals clearly have never stepped foot in a University of Chicago Economics classroom. No, the only critique that actually holds some sort of internal logic is that it costs too much. Governments have listened to this critique before. It’s one of the reasons college is currently so expensive. However, the expense, and if you’ve read at least two of these newsletters you’ll know where this is going, is easily covered. The federal government could fund public university for every student for one hundred years with just a portion of the military budget. I guess you could argue that US universities aren’t Marxist enough, or that they just churn out capitalists, but if you’d tank free college over that, you’re just trying to score points on Twitter.
US colleges have a lot of problems. Making them free for everyone won’t solve all those problems. But what it will do is provide everyone in the US a chance to learn about themselves, and about the world. That’s priceless.
[1] I am aware of the qualms good thinking people have with the UDHR, but it’s a good test case.