How much wd alternative HRC-SBS "free" college expense plans help in alleviating income inequality?
IMO, during her first 100 days as POTUS, Hillary Rodham Clinton very likely would get her former Senate colleagues to pass a research-based $6 billion a year college expense funding plan guaranteed to reduce future economic inequality.
Government could OFFER "free" 4-yesr public college TUITION to all, but cannot ensure that everyone would ACCEPT "free" 4-year public college tuition, except mainly for the wealthy who had planned to send their children to UVa, UMich, Cal Berkeley, etc, anyway.
In contrast, HRC would make tuition and some other expenses "free" ONLY for commuters to community colleges, and would pay away-from-home campus expenses for years three and four ONLY at HBCUs.
Republican TN Gov Bill Haslan already has implemented a very popular version of this research-based idea focused on every 2yr CC but only on a few 4yr public colleges:
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2015/01/25/tennessee-promise-bill-haslam-free-community-college-tuition/22255303/.
His plan has become very popular in that reddest of red states.
HRC's nationwide ACP (America's College Promise) plan, proposed by President Obama in his SOTU, is estimated to cost $6 billion a year, which is very affordable IMO compared to SBS's alternative plan.
IMO ACP would have the support of many industry associations and even some growth-focused Rs during Hillary's "honeymoon"
Not so for Bernie's perhaps research-ignorant cynical ploy to gain political support from white millennials. As thesquanderer has pointed out, the demand for four-year college degrees by children of the wealthy is very inelastic, so driving their tuition costs to zero would provide almost exclusively a tax-transfer consumer surplus windfall to the Trumps, Kochs, Hiltons, etd, with no economic growth benefits. That is the definition of government waste. And that waste would increase current inequality by transferring hard-earned tax revenues from the rest of us to those who can pay their way already.
The White-House / HRC ACP, otoh, would not attract those who could afford four-year college and those who want to extend their adolescence at "frat-party-schools" like West Virginia. Community colleges attract working commuters who largely attend part-time because they have to work, and very few of the wealthy. So almost no taxpayer money would be wasted on the affluent, who would find community college too downscale for their children.
A brilliant book by Harvard econ professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz demonstrates convincingly the cost effectiveness of the last exxtension of minimum universal education offer funding, to high schools in all states by the beginning of the twentieth century. This book also demonstrates the ESSENTIAL connection between minimum level of universal education offer funding and economic ineauality. See http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674035300&content=reviews
Note also the likely effect on future inequality of these earnings statistics fron the US Dept of Education, at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cba.asp
Figure 2. Median annual earnings of full-time year-round workers ages 25 34, by educational attainment: 2013
HS completer $30,000
Associates degree
$37,500
Bachelors degree $48,500
If future earnings go up 25 percent for the large percentage of the poor who are lucky to leave school with a high school diploma, and do not change for those who under the status quo would go on to get bachelors degrees anyway, future inequality MUST come down
Bernie is peddling hot air to the naive and willfully ignorant, IMO.
Bernie's plan surely wouold transfer hundreds of billions of tax dollars to the wealthy with no gain in output of bachelors degrees for employment in growth industries. That would increase inequality now.
Public four-year institutions are concentrated in a handful of university towns in each state. Most who choose to go there would have to live on campus away from home unless their parents happen to live in a university town.
Poor families cannot afford room, board, transportation, pocket money, etc. for students away from home, so, unless the poor family lives in a college town, Bernie's plan is no good to them for four-year educations and the higher earnings such education brings in the future.
If some non-poor kids are induced to get four-year educations with Bernie's plan, that adds to inequality between chilfren of poverty and children of non-poverty in the future, IMO.
= new reply since forum marked as read
