The higher-education landscape has changed dramatically in the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, but one notable shift that he helped bring about has gone almost unnoticed: the mainstreaming of the idea of free public college.
Student activists have been calling for free public higher education for decades — and for decades, such demands were widely seen as utopian, even ridiculous. At the annual summer meetings of the United States Student Association, or USSA, the group’s stance on free higher education was endlessly debated, with opponents arguing that to embrace a position so far from political reality could only marginalize the organization. Now, however, the Democratic nominee for president finds her own support for nearly free public college derided by many liberals as a half-measure and a craven compromise.
How did we get here?
In this special issue of The Chronicle Review, we turn our attention to the accomplishments and disappointments of the past eight years. See the whole issue here.
Half a century ago, when USSA’s predecessor embraced the concept for the first time, free higher education was having a moment. A significant number of public and private institutions were already charging no or nominal tuition, and the Students for a Democratic Society slogan, “a free university in a free society,” while not targeted specifically at tuition policy, reflected a broad desire to break down all barriers to access. When New York State held a constitutional convention in 1967, it adopted a provision mandating the establishment of “a system of free higher education for the benefit of all the people of the state.” (The language was struck in a last-minute reversal.)
But the ’60s would prove the high-water mark of the free-college idea. Economic crisis in the ’70s stretched state budgets thin, while the success of activist campaigns to expand access to higher education raised the cost of providing it. As poor people enrolled in college in growing numbers, support for free higher education collapsed. (The City University of New York, which had been free since the 19th century, established an open admissions policy in 1970. Six years later, it began charging tuition.)
In the decades that followed, states across the country disinvested from public higher education, with more and more of the cost of college falling on the backs of students (and on federal financial-aid budgets). With tuition rising every year, advocates for higher-education access turned their focus to slowing the rise in student costs. When even halting increases seemed beyond reach, the idea of free higher education struck many as utterly fantastical.
In 2008, Obama’s sole proposal to expand access to higher education was a tax credit tied to community service — a modest idea. Almost immediately after Obama assumed office, however, the ground began to shift. Campus protests against tuition hikes in California drew turnout not seen since the ’60s, and the activists’ tactics inspired students across the country. When total student debt hit the $1-trillion mark in 2012, it made national headlines.
Obama helped mainstream the idea of free public higher education.
In the first six years of his presidency, Obama took an incrementalist approach to addressing rising tuition and student debt. But in early 2015, he took a bold stand in support of free community college — or, as he framed it in that year’s State of the Union address, making “two years of college … as free and universal in America as high school is today.”
Obama’s proposal, which owed much to policies enacted by Tennessee’s Republican governor the previous year, has critics among both liberals (who worry, among other things, about diverting students away from four-year colleges) and conservatives (who see it as a new budget-busting entitlement), and it has not yet been taken up by Congress. But similar initiatives have since been put in place in Oregon, Minnesota, and various localities, and are being considered in other states.
At least as significant, Obama’s stand has helped throw open the doors to a far broader discussion of tuition policy. Sen. Bernie Sanders made free public higher education a centerpiece of his insurgent campaign for the presidency, and Hillary Clinton, after running on “debt-free” college during the primaries, has now endorsed free college for students and families with incomes of up to $125,000. Clinton’s embrace of Obama’s free community-college plan was so uncontroversial as to pass nearly without notice.
Free higher education, long dismissed as a pipe dream, is now a part of mainstream, bipartisan public discourse. On the national and state level, the fight to make and keep public colleges tuition-free will be central to struggles over education policy during the next presidency and beyond. And on campus, student activists have gained a powerful new rhetorical weapon in their campaigns against tuition hikes, for higher-education access, and even, perhaps, for a more student-centered university.
