Make College Free
It is long past time to make college free, and thankfully the Atlantic writer Jordan Weissman just laid out the case very nicel y. Jordan points out that the money invested in our financial aid system could instead be invested in appropriations to public colleges and universities to drive down costs. Yes, aid to private colleges would end. Oh well! Why do we pay for private colleges when we don't pay for private high schools? (Well, we are starting too but we should stop.) And yes, we need to cover costs of attendance for the poorest students too and we can do that by charging very low tuition to rich kids to give to poor kids (for whom tuition is free)-- and that's a progressive tuition structure rather than this incredibly deceptive price discounting scheme we now have in place. As I've been pointing out in talks around the country on the subject "When America Goes to College ," our current system of affordability was developed at a time when the college-goin...