This crisis is a game changer. Suddenly states and schools are worried about finances.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Pandemic’s New Victim? Free CollegeThough they don’t necessarily doom the plans, the financial struggles of states amid the coronavirus pandemic have become a major obstacle to free college proposals from presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden.So much so that at least one proponent of free college, Morley Winograd, president of the Campaign for Free College Tuition, acknowledged that the proposals from Sanders and Biden on how to pay for eliminating tuition now are unlikely to happen. The plans “need to be put aside for now,” he said, given the focus on preventing state cuts from sending college tuition soaring.”Colleges never fully recovered from the last recession, and now they need tens of billions of dollars to avoid massive tuition hikes,” said James Kvaal, president of the Institute for College Access & Success and former deputy domestic policy adviser in the Obama White House. “The first priority for both the federal government and states has to be addressing steep budget cuts and preventing large tuition hikes.”Kvaal said that “puts the free college plans in doubt for the foreseeable future.” But he said free tuition could still happen sometime in the future.What’s dampening hopes for many higher education experts is that both candidates’ plans call for states to chip in tens of billions of dollars.
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