Higher ED Advocates: Debt-Free College Should Boost Need-Based Grants, Federal-State Partnerships
By Brittany Hackett, Communications Staff
Policymakers looking to implement a debt-free college plan should focus on bolstering the Pell Grant Program and other federal need-based grants, establishing strong federal-state partnerships, and encouraging state investment in higher education, according to a group of higher education advocates who spoke at a Capitol Hill event on Thursday.
During the event, Demos Senior Policy Analyst Mark Huelsman said that the popularity of debt-free college proposals during the current presidential election has created an opportunity for policymakers to implement such a policy, potentially within the first 100 days of the next administration.
“The time is now and our policy window is here,” Huelsman said.
There has been some consensus in the higher education community that the root of the problem with rising college costs and high student debt is state disinvestment in higher education coupled with declining support for need-based programs at the federal level, Hueslman said. A debt-free college program with a strong federal-state funding partnership could help solve this problem, as it would include strong incentives from the federal government and enough flexibility to allow states to invest their funds where they are most needed, he added.
Jennifer Wang, the office director in Washington, DC, at The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS), said that a bill recently proposed by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) “contains a good mechanism” for achieving what Huelsman proposed. The Degrees Not Debt Act would ask schools to limit tuition increases to the rate of inflation and would require that schools meet the primary (tuition and fees) and secondary (cost of living) expenses for students at or below 350 percent of the poverty line.
In addition to bolstering federal need-based aid and partnerships with states, Young Invincibles Executive Director Jennifer Mishroy said that conversations about debt-free college should also include discussion of how to help current students burdened by student loan debt, barriers to completion for students, and how to help prospective students avoid taking on burdensome amounts of debt.
And as momentum builds in the elections, Generation Progress Executive Director Maggie Thompson said it is important that politicians know that debt-free college is a voting issues among Millennials.
“I can’t underscore enough the political potency of this issue,” Thompson said, noting that recent polling data from Generation Progress shows that Millennial voters were most motivated by policy solutions around college costs and student debt. “That’s where we see these higher ed and student debt issues really pop,” she said.
Thompson said that it is important that proposals to address issues like debt-free college or student loan debt include provisions for both prospective and current students, such as ways to address existing student loan debt through refinancing or better repayment options. She also said that higher education needs be reinvested in to make it a public good and to have better accountability measures for bad actors within higher education.
Publication Date: 9/30/2016
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