FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE?

In 1959 I took the State University of New York State college entrance exam and checked off three schools where my scores would be sent. I was accepted at the third one, although I had never heard of it (SUNY at Geneseo). But tuition was free at all of the SUNY colleges. Were it not for that, I'd never have gone. I was from a lower middle-class family and it was all they could do to scrape together the living expenses and textbook costs. 

What happened? I'm not sure. But there were others like me, with poor high school grades, who were the first in their families to go to college. We were being given a shot and it paid off. I got my Ph.D., Lew got his Bachelor's and went on to get a law degree, John went to Harvard and became an Economist and eventually a Professor of Economics at RPI, Dick got a Ph.D. in Reading Education, and there were many more with similar success stories. But let me be clear. SUNY Geneseo did not lower their standards. They challenged us and we responded. Sadly, that option is no longer available.

So now there's the headline--free community college. But a part of me is suspicious because I'm well aware that one of the White House tactics (regardless of who is "in") is to make an announcement that has a positive spin that will distract from something they'd rather the public not think amount. I'm not sure what it might be in this case (the Republicans takeover of the Senate?), but it seems to have worked. And as part of this announcement, White House director Cecilia Muñoz said Obama aims to make college “the norm in the same way high school is the norm now."  Well, just what is the 'norm' now?

The National Center for Education Statistics [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_coi.asp] reported that in 2012-13, 81% of high school seniors graduated on-time with a High School diploma. I suppose that constitutes a 'norm' of some sort. But what does it suggest if we need to increase the number of years of free education to 14? Perhaps it means that the quality of those 12 years of education (when no child was left behind?) has declined to the point where we need to add two years in order to get back to the level we once had when 12 did the trick.I'm leaning toward that explanation.

Another view of the announcement is that it's driven by an economic need. In an article in the New York Times, Justin Wolfers (Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan) said that "educational attainment has almost completely stalled over the past three decades." And he added that "Economists believe that there are really only three ways to raise living standards over the long run: to invest more in education, to invest more in machines or to innovate so that the same people and machines can more effectively be combined to produce more output." So perhaps the President sees it the same way--stimulate economic growth by reviving education.

Not so, says the The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS), which is typically in step with the Obama administration. It's not going to help the economy because it's (in their words) “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Among the problems, TICAS says, is that "the more substantial costs of college — living expenses, textbooks and transportation — are typically left out of the deal." (I can hear the school bus companies drooling now.) But I don't buy that argument.

What worries me is that there's this inordinate pressure on the community colleges to "produce results." And that's not measured by the kind of things my Geneseo classmates and I produced. It's measured by things like completion rates which are easily produced through the manipulation of data.

But that's another commentary. So stick around and we'll talk about it.