In recent years, numerous plans have risen to the forefront of public discussion concerning the funding of tuition at public universities. Though many of these publicly-funded plans share the “free college tuition” moniker, it is imperative people delve through them carefully since each has its own intricacies, means of implementation and impact on populations. This week, Collin’s presentation and the authors of the readings focused on and brought up valid critiques of the new plan proposed by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo. They pointed to the program’s potentially detrimental impact on low-income students, while greatly benefiting upper-middle-class students. Largely, this is due to the fact that Cuomo’s plan, unlike Senator Sanders or Secretary Clinton’s federal plans, doesn’t allow students to keep grant aids awarded by programs like TAP. Instead, his plan only covers the difference between aid and tuition, which in turn benefits relatively wealthy young adults who can easily afford tuition and hurts students who need the additional financial aid to pay for other hefty expenses such as supplies and living expenses. As a result, this concern by Collin and the authors demonstrated empirical validity in and should be taken into account.

After general agreement on the flaws of Cuomo’s plan, disagreement arose when the class discussed the broader impact of “free” college tuition on the quality of education. Opponents of fully funded tuition argued that by taking away tuition costs from public universities and colleges it would lower the quality of the student base because everyone would be accepted regardless of their merit and people would lose their financial incentive to work hard. Personally, these arguments didn’t resonate with me for several reasons. Firstly, publically funded schools similar to Baruch can and should continue to have merit-based criteria in their admissions process, regardless if their educational experience is fully paid for by tax dollars. This would be similar to how selective public high schools in New York City work, where everyone can apply to these “free” tuition schools, but only the students with the highest standardized test scores and grades are accepted based on the merit of their work. If anything, an increased number of applicants to public colleges and universities, as mentioned by the opponents of “free” tuition, would amplify the number of highly qualified students just by the sheer increase in the size of the applicant pool. Hence, by eliminating economic barriers and not mandating public colleges and universities to accept everyone, a free market based more on merit, not the ability to pay, would be created, effectively increasing the quality of the student body and public education as a whole.

In terms of free-tuition reducing the incentive to work hard, I felt several of the arguments made were either anecdotal or hypothetical at best (i.e. referencing accounts of friends on Long Island) when there is actually evidence that suggests otherwise. In various European and South American countries where education is “free”, millions of people are motivated enough to complete their college education and obtain valuable degrees. It isn’t uncommon for these students, who have had publically-funded education their whole lives, to have better or comparable education outcomes as American students in terms of reading, math and science scores, as shown by the OECD’s world education rankings. Also, we can consider the performance of merit-based “free” public high schools in New York. According to U.S. News’ New York high school rankings, ten out of ten of the top schools were public schools who were rated the highest based on AP scores, college preparedness, English and math proficiency, among other markers. Though it was argued that these high school students have the incentive to get into a good college, in the same breath, it can be argued that college students would still have the drive to get good grades to get into a prodigious graduate school or to get a well-paying job after graduation. Therefore, I feel there is some compelling evidence aboard and domestically that shows no tuition costs have little impact on a student’s drive to learn.

Another topic discussed was the broad funding of college education being a sunken cost. While it’s true some liberal arts degrees are meaningless and shouldn’t be funded by taxpayers, other liberal arts degrees offer real social and cultural value to society that doesn’t necessary show monetarily. Still, I thought the idea of forming programs specifically for STEM to be a practical, smart and bipartisan idea proposed by Chris. The case can also be made for blanket education funding being an economic multiplier and an agent for social mobility, as shown by the economic returns seen by the GI Bill after WWII and the successes of many other Western nations in fostering higher rates of economic mobility when compared to the U.S. Of course, there are other factors that attributed to these results but certainly publically funded college education played a significant role.

Overall, the debate on free college tuition is truly a debate on outlook humankind and hypothetical impact. Obviously, public colleges can be paid for by tax dollars, whether by reallocating tax spending or raising taxes. But it is really a question if people see providing “free” college education as a societal benefit or detriment, whether socially, economically, or culturally. As a result, this is an issue of immense ideological and educational value, and should continue to be debated and discussed, so that hopefully, one day, the country can resolve various problems, such as the student debt crisis and lagging social mobility.