There has been a lot of discussion and debate about the concept of “free college” during this contentious presidential election.
But in an op-ed in The Washington Post today, LSU President F. King Alexander says it’s a shame that the public “has heard very little about the key element behind providing free higher education or even just maintaining affordable options: a federal-state partnership to incentivize continued or enhanced state investment in public colleges and universities.”
Alexander says it’s a concept that’s already used to encourage state funding for healthcare, highways and hospitals.
“Simply put, it leverages federal dollars to incentivize states to maintain at least a base level of funding for their public colleges and universities,” he writes in the op-ed. “It has been advocated by everyone from politicians and higher education leaders to D.C.-based think tanks and scholars.”
While many hypotheses about why tuition has increased have been bandied about, Alexander says, studies have shown that more than 80% of public higher education tuition increases during the past two decades were directly related to state disinvestment.
“In other words, as states backed out of their previous funding commitments, colleges and universities were forced to charge more just to cover basic costs and maintain competitiveness,” he writes. “The long-term result of this ongoing trend is that state tax effort for higher education (which measures actual state spending by a state’s total taxable resources per capita) is currently down to 1965 funding levels.”
If nothing is done to stop states from distancing themselves from their funding responsibilities, Alexander warns, Colorado will become the first state not to spend a single penny on public higher education as early as 2025.
“This means that Colorado children who are now in pre-K classes will have no affordable public college or university options in less than a decade. States that will soon follow include Louisiana (2027), Iowa (2029), Michigan (2030), and Arizona (2032),” he writes.
Read the full op-ed by Alexander in The Washington Post.
