I’m starting with this one because I’m most familiar with both candidates platforms. There are pros and cons to both. Before we get into the actual policy, here are both candidates positions from their Issues page:
Bernie Sanders Issues – College Tuition
Hillary Clinton Issues – College Tuition
FYI: I am sticking with the candidates’ issue page, because these are their policies in their own words and not from a biased source or publication. Fair?
First, I’ll point out that both candidates only address tuition, not room and board which can cost close to the actual tuition. The schools we looked into, the cost for room and board ran from 18,000.00 – 28,000.00 a year. Yikes!
Hillary offers free tuition at Community Colleges. She also applies this plan to not borrowing for an individual’s state college – which wouldn’t have worked for us because neither of my kids wanted to attend UD. Her plan addressing universities and colleges is limits students to their state schools. I don’t like that because I can easily see how it can be manipulated in student selection. More out of state students getting in? She says states will have to step up and invest in higher education – which, imo, is extremely doubtful. They’ve been cutting money to higher ed. Will this plan happen? Doubtful, but there may be inroads into Community Colleges which is good.
Bernie’s require states to fund his plan along with the federal government. Like I said above, are these the same states that are cutting higher education funding now? It also looks like this is a state-by-state opt in plan that will need support of Governors and State reps/senators? Sorta like the Medicaid expansion in the ACA (Don’t even get me started). This will probably play out as free tuition in extremely liberal states – like California – but not in most others. So he’s really not proposing tuition free college for all. Will this plan happen? Doubtful – I was going to end with the same sentence in the paragraph above, but I don’t see Community Colleges addressed on Bernie’s Issue page. Am I missing this? That’s a serious, snark-free question since I’m sure he’s addressed this.
In the end, I’m 100% on board for free community college, not so much for public colleges/universities – unless we’re talking about free tuition at every public college and university in every state – then sign me up! I do think we should increase the amount of Pell Grants issued and colleges be held responsible for lowering tuition.
I didn’t go into the parts of their plans they agree on, like having students work to contribute to their education and restructuring student loans (present and future), but if anyone sees a difference I missed, please point it out.