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."
No comments:
Post a Comment