Thursday, July 11, 2013

"Delayed payment" for college tuition?....goofy


OK, this is my candidate for Goofy Idea Of The Month:

The Oregon legislature has passed, and Gov. John Kitzhaber is poised to sign, a bill that tells the state's Higher Education Coordinating Commission to figure out how to collect college tuition from students AFTER they graduate.

Two education policy wonks, Audrey Peck and John Burbank, thought this one up: for example, students would complete college without paying tuition, and then would pay a percentage of their annual income for 25 years to cover the cost, i.e. graduates would pay 4% of their income for 25 years.

I think this is nuts. Obviously different students with different income streams would end up paying different amounts for the same education. No guarantee that the students collectively would actually pay back all of the tuition they deferred. Some students would die before completing their payments. How to enforce the future payments? Would Oregon try to garnish the wages of graduates who move to another state? Wow. I think this idea is goofy.

The main objection: this plan does nothing to address the issues of why college costs so much, and why the cost of attending college keeps rising faster than inflation.

Deferring payment for college way into the future is a pretty transparent way of more or less guaranteeing that someone else is ultimately going to pay for it.

College isn't free. Let's not do goofy stuff that suggests anyone can "go to college for free now, and pay later."












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