Free College!

Hillary Clinton continued her pandering to Bernie Sanders voters this week, unveiling a plan to make college tuition free to families (important note there) making less than $85k/year, eventually upping that to $125k/year.

If you don't yet have children in college, this probably sounds like an awesome idea and a real money saver.  Let me un-Voxsplain to you.

• The plan only covers tuition.  As anyone who looks hard at college bills knows, tuition is about 1/2 of the money it takes to take classes, as fees and services usually cover the other half of the non-room and board college costs.  
• The plan does not cover room and board.  At most colleges and universities, unless you live with your parents, this is going to be about 50% to 100% of tuition.  
• So, Hillary's plan would cover about 1/4 of the total cost of college.  You would still need parents or loans to cover the rest.
• It sounds great, but it's not going to eliminate the need for loans or sugar daddy's (i.e. "parents").

Continuing the economics lesson here, what is likely to happen when college is subsidized by the American taxpayer as it will have to be?  Well, as it has the last 30 or so years as more and more of college is paid for by someone else (in the form of guaranteed student loans, at remarkably low interest rates), it will become even more expensive.  And while those families making up to $125k may benefit from the taxpayers covering tuition, they'll still have those fees and room and board to cover.

Additionally, someone, besides the taxpayers, will have to make up the cost for those students having their tuition subsidized.  And that someone will be - families making over $125k/year.

Now, I don't need to tell you if you file a tax return, but a 2 earner household doesn't have to have 2 awesome jobs to get over that threshold.  So, before you crow about how fantastic this is, recognize that it is the middle class who is going to be footing the bill for this, in the form of higher tuition and fees, so that states can meet the requirement to offer "free" tuition to those others.

Ultimately, you need to consider who is the beneficiary of government mandates such as this?  Is it really students, or is it tenured professors and university administrators who gain from higher attendance figures, and for whom graduation rates are usually not important.

The academy is a linchpin of Democrat politics.  

Proposals such as this are corporate welfare for universities, not attempts to make college more affordable (at which they have failed miserably over time) or more available (it is private, online universities that offer the best chance to do this).