This week, the race to see who can promise voters more free stuff took a fairly unsurprising turn when Bernie Sanders announced a $2.2 trillion bill to cancel all existing student loan debt and make community colleges and universities free for everyone. Sanders announced this plan along with Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Washington’s own Rep. Pramila Jayapal at a campaign event in Rock Hill, South Carolina on Monday.
“In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, it is simply not acceptable that our younger generation, through no fault of their own, will have a lower standard of living than their parents—more debt, lower wages and less likelihood of owning their own homes,” Sanders said at the event. “That is why this proposal completely eliminates student debt and ends the absurdity of sentencing an entire generation to a lifetime of debt for the crime of doing the right thing—that is, going out and getting a higher education.”
It’s an ambitious plan, and one that has approximately zero chance of passing in the current Congress. That, however, isn’t the point. Sanders, if you recall, is running for President, and this seems to be as much a strategic campaign move as it is a realistic piece of legislation—especially because Elizabeth Warren, who has a debt-cancelation plan of her own, keeps gaining on Sanders in the polls. And as far as campaign promises go, there’s a lot to like here—especially if you’re among the 45 million Americans who owe money on student loans. Under Sanders’ plan, all student loans guaranteed by the federal government would be automatically canceled within six months of the legislation being signed into law. (Private loans, however, are a different story, and borrowers would have to request loan forgiveness through the Department of Education.)
Sanders says he would pay for this windfall by taxing Wall Street speculation. “The American people bailed out Wall Street; now it is time for Wall Street to come to the aid of the middle class,” he said at the announcement. But it’s worth noting here that it’s not just the middle class who will benefit: Everyone with a student loan, under this plan, is treated the same. Unlike Elizabeth Warren’s plan to deal with the student debt crisis—which benefits those with incomes of less that $250,000 and caps forgiveness at $50,000—under Sanders’ plan, everyone will have their debt canceled, no matter how poor or how rich. If the Kardashians take out student loans, they will be covered by this legislation, too (although I assume most rich people don’t take out student loans when they could just write a check and/or bribe a volleyball coach).
While both the Warren plan and the Sanders plan would be funded by the wealthiest American tax-payers, the means of extracting that wealth are slightly different: Warren would tax individual wealth—anyone with a fortune of $50 million or more would be levied an annual 2 percent tax; anyone worth over a billion would be taxed 3 percent—while Sanders would tax Wall Street transactions specifically.
As for what happens after all this debt is written off, both Sanders and Warren have proposed making higher education tuition-free, including both four-year universities and community colleges. And it’s not hard to see why this is popular among young people and students. Currently, the average college graduate leaves school with nearly $40,000 in debt—a far greater sum than just a generation before. But, as I wrote when Warren pitched her plan, whether it is free or not, higher education should not be required to make a decent living in the U.S.
College is always going to be required for some vocations, and there’s obviously intrinsic value in learning, but we need to move away from an economy that penalizes people who don’t have degrees. In the 1950s, less than half of the population had a bachelor’s degree or higher (which was a huge jump from the decade before, thanks to the GI Bill), and yet, moderately well-paying jobs in manufacturing and other industries were enough to buy a house and have a solidly middle-class life. The death of industries, the loss of unions, wage stagnation, job automation, and the increasing cost of living means those days are long over, and a college degree (which is many times more expensive than it was in the 1950s) is now almost a requirement to get into some kind of semi-decent profession. Still, I’m hard pressed to see how more college graduates—a likely consequence of free education—is going to address this problem. A degree is great if you want one, but it is not the be-all, end-all to career advancement. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than 20 percent of jobs in the U.S. actually require a bachelor’s degree, and a quarter of those who do graduate earn no more than those with just a high school education.
Of course, foregoing education, whether by choice or by circumstance, is not a good position to be in, especially in the U.S. As Ellen Ruppel Shell, a professor of science journalism, wrote last year in the New York Times, “No other nation punishes the ‘uneducated’ as harshly as the United States. Nearly 30 percent of Americans without a high school diploma live in poverty, compared to 5 percent with a college degree, and we infer that this comes from a lack of education. But in 28 other wealthy developed countries, a lack of a high school diploma increases the probability of poverty by less than 5 percent. In these nations, a dearth of education does not predestine citizens for poverty.”
We should look to those nations for legislative inspiration. In Germany, for instance, most students start vocational training and apprenticeships while in secondary school, which isn’t just free, they actually get paid while they train. Then, after completing school, there’s a job waiting for them among one of thousands of German companies. Universities are nearly free, but they are also very, very competitive to get into. Ultimately, only 30 percent of German students go on to higher education, less than half the rate in the U.S. And while this may seem unfair (college, after all, is a great place to get laid), you can still have a decent life and make a decent living without a university education. So while free tuition is great, not needing a higher education is would be even better. I’d like to see a presidential candidate address that.
