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Make
College Free for Everyone |
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ALSO
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THIS PAGE:
Where Do Bush & Gore Stand?
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Photo
© 2000 Loren Santow, Impact Visuals |
One of the most cost-effective federal
programs in U.S. history, a study by the congressional Joint
Economic Committee once found, was the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act — more popularly known as the GI Bill of
Rights.
Every dollar spent on providing free tuition
and other supports to millions of soldiers returning from
World War II yielded a return of $6.90. The nation’s
colleges and universities were resuscitated, and the
intellectual capital created by a generation of
college-educated working-class men and women fueled the nation’s
postwar expansion. What might have been an economic
catastrophe — the sudden return of millions of unemployed
vets desperate for a job — was turned to the nation’s
advantage.
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Where
Do Bush
& Gore Stand?
Education
is allegedly a major theme of the 2000 presidential race, but
neither Vice President Al Gore nor Texas governor George Bush
are putting forward much in the way of bold proposals,
especially when it comes to widening access to a college
education.
The
proposal Gore touts most loudly is his plan to nearly double
tuition-related tax relief. Americans could deduct up to
$10,000 in tuition from their taxable income, or take up to a
$2,800 tax credit. Gore also proposes to set up work-based
savings accounts that would allow employees to set aside
tax-free money for college tuition. The Vice President is less
emphatic about his support for increasing the Pell Grant
program, which provides modest tuition support for low-income
students.
Gore’s
emphasis on tuition tax breaks — like his many other tax
break proposals — is a direct appeal to the middle and upper
class. Poor people pay little or no federal taxes, and so don’t
receive the benefits of such programs. Notes Thomas G.
Mortenson, editor of Postsecondary Education Opportunity:
"Gore has clearly bought into the Clinton notion of
serving middle-class voters first. Then if there’s anything
left over for the poor folks, you throw a few bones in
there." Mortenson argues that as a result of such
approaches, by the mid-1990s, access to higher education was
more unequal than at any time in the last 25 years.
Oddly,
Bush puts more emphasis on the Pell Grant program. He proposes
raising the maximum grant for first-year college students and
giving Pell recipients an extra $1,000 if they take
college-level math or science courses in high school. But
given the Republican Party’s general record on support for
education — until recently they were calling for eliminating
the Education Department entirely — education advocates are
wary. What’s more, people wonder where the money will come
from, once Bush institutes his staggering $1.9 trillion tax
cut.
It
shouldn’t be necessary to choose between who will be able to
afford college — the poor or the middle class. As the GI
Bill shows, it pays to give people from all walks of life free
access to a college education.
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CONTROVERSIAL
The GI Bill was quite controversial when it
was passed in 1945. Opponents argued it was too expensive and
amounted to a handout that would encourage veterans to be
lazy. Some educators were afraid the enormous influx of
working-class vets would lower standards in education. The
U.S. was just emerging from the depression, entrenched in a
world war, and heavily in debt.
Despite all that, the bill was signed. Within
two years, veterans accounted for 49 percent of college
enrollment. About 40 percent of the GI enrollees, it is
estimated, would not have gone to college had it not been for
the GI Bill. By the program’s end in 1956, some 7.8 million
people had been trained through the GI Bill — just about
half of the nation’s 15 million veterans.
The GI Bill provided full tuition coverage,
plus paid for lab fees, books, health insurance, and supplies.
Students also received up to $12,000 per year (in today’s
dollars) in income assistance.
RISING COSTS TODAY
Today, the U.S. is in its tenth year of
economic expansion, and surpluses abound. Meanwhile, the cost
of tuition gets ever higher, making college increasingly
inaccessible to working-class students. (Average tuition at a
four-year college has doubled since 1980.) Partly as a result,
the U.S. no longer leads the world in the proportion of
students who graduate from college. And yet, no one dares
propose so bold a measure as what Congress passed in 1945.
LP PROPOSAL:
GUARANTEED,
FREE COLLEGE
EDUCATION FOR ALL
At its July meeting, the Labor Party’s
Interim National Council passed a resolution calling on the
Labor Party to begin planning a national campaign to guarantee
everyone free access to a college education at public state
and city colleges and universities, all the way to the
postgraduate level. The annual cost would be $23 billion, a
small fraction of the nation’s $7 trillion gross domestic
product.
Says Labor Party national organizer Tony
Mazzocchi, a beneficiary of the GI Bill: "History
demonstrates that guaranteeing everyone access to a public
education — from preschool to postgraduate — is one of the
wisest investments our nation could make."
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