The pricing of higher education is always a bit mysterious. In the past, colleges and universities have gotten into considerable trouble for price-fixing when it emerged that they had colluded to set their tuition rates or financial aid packages. But sometimes colleges and universities can read the situation without colluding.
I doubt that the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the entire University of Texas system coordinated their decisions to cut tuition to zero for students of “modest incomes,” even if these institutions acted at nearly the same time. They were just joining a large crowd of colleges and universities that have recently decided that free tuition for the non-affluent is the way to go.
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But whether this is a good idea remains to be seen.
Scholarships for very bright and determined students lacking the financial resources to attend college are an old idea. But the new trend seemingly goes beyond that. It involves free tuition for many students who could plausibly pay a portion of the expenses.
Why ask the students who do pay full or partial tuition to subsidize the others?
The colleges present this as a matter of “social justice,” and perhaps that is the main driver. But it is also driven by an odd form of institutional vanity. No college wants to be left out of getting its “share” of students from impoverished or humble backgrounds. As the number of students from such backgrounds eager to enroll in college continues to shrink (see my essay on America’s demographic cliff), colleges offer “free tuition” as a lure.
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Whether the students responding to this lure are better off in the long run is impossible to say. Some might be trading away perfectly good career opportunities for a credential of dubious worth. Will the colleges and universities themselves benefit from having a larger number of students whose families rank lower on the income scale? If those students are bright and ambitious, yes, but otherwise, probably not.
In general, the free tuition gambit combines two trends: first, the effort of elite colleges to sustain their story that they serve a broad public interest and are not just a club for the children of wealthy and privileged families; second, the flailing of institutions of higher education that are waking up to the reality that young people have more and more good options besides seeking a four-year degree.
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Cover image created by Jared Gould using text-to-image AI. Prompt: “Depict social justice activism influencing colleges and universities to offer free tuition, represented symbolically. Exclude any words or text from the image.”
