Higher Education Should Be Free -- And We Need a Movement to Make It So

By Liza Featherstone, The Nation. Posted June 16, 2009.

Not surprisingly, European political imaginations, nourished by decades of social democracy, run a little wilder. In Germany, where higher education used to be free and tuition has existed only for a few years, Bavarian students responded to increases by taking to the streets and demanding the abolition of tuition. In Zagreb, students occupied a building for five weeks in response to tuition hikes, demanding "free education from primary school to doctorate."

Even here, neoliberalism hasn't completely foreclosed discussion of socialized higher education. Not many politicians want to go there yet -- although John Edwards did, during the last Democratic primary. But if a movement demanded it, who knows what might happen? Why not demand that higher education be free? Why not take the meritocratic promise of this country at face value and try to make it real? A few groups are agitating for small reforms in the context of this far-longer-term goal. City College activists constantly remind their fellow students that the school used to be free. PHENOM, the Massachusetts coalition, "takes on short-term issues, pennies more for financial aid" -- "win a little, lose a little," as staff organizer Wulkan puts it. But PHENOM also published a paper advocating that community colleges be free and has been holding public events to discuss this demand. The group has even started talking to legislators about it. "They are receptive," says Wulkan. "Though, of course they say, Not this year."

There are excellent practical reasons to make college free, beginning with the Keynesian. "From the standpoint of stimulating the economy, it's a no-brainer," says Adolph Reed Jr., University of Pennsylvania political science professor and organizer of the Free Higher Ed! campaign, originated by the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute, a think tank associated with the Labor Party. "It puts [government] money into play and creates jobs by expanding the number of people who will go to college." More important, Reed says, "education is a social right, like healthcare." (This is a premise Americans accept when it comes to younger kids: people had to fight for free high school in the early twentieth century, but we now take it for granted, and we would find the suggestion that only rich children deserve an education morally repellent.) To Reed, it's uncivilized that we don't have free higher education already. "To oppose it is to embrace a conviction that not everyone should be able to pursue an education, that it should be rationed by cost." In any case, he argues, the "cost is so laughably low": about $80 billion to make all public institutions free, much less than the recent bank bailouts.

This sort of vision -- combined with demands that may sound more "reasonable" and be easier to achieve quickly -- attracts young people to a movement. Asked what drew him to organize for the City College walkout, Jason King recalls coming to a meeting in the Morales/Shakur center -- controversially named for two City College radicals accused of involvement in political violence in the 1970s. "I saw mad revolutionary type of shit," King says, pointing to the banners celebrating rebels around the globe. "I'm in a very Renaissance stage of life," he muses, "trying to figure out how the world works. Learning about this tuition increase, I realize I've been very naïve."

For those not inclined to revolutionary flourish or philosophical exploration -- although, of course, these in themselves are arguments for a college education -- there's always the democratic idealism of a Townsend Harris. Or the equally old-school American Dream. As student rep Gionni Carr puts it: "We are just trying to better ourselves." Whatever the rhetoric, it's about time we educated everyone.

Obama's proposed reforms are a long way from this ideal, but they reflect a widespread hunger for affordable education. While no movement has yet emerged to force the president to be a real visionary, it's not too bold to hope that his election signals a more thoughtful turn in American politics. Obama seems to embody, especially in contrast with his predecessor, the virtues of a great education. It is, then, a promising moment to make a case for higher learning and for universal opportunity. Says Wulkan, "There's been a slight change in everyone's understanding of the world." That's not a bad place to start.

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Liza Featherstone is a New York City-based journalist. She is the author, most recently, of "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights At Wal-Mart" (Basic).

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