© Matt Rourke, APThe Clinton College Unaffordability Plan
The reaction to Hillary Clinton's new, more generous college affordability plan has mostly followed partisan lines. Liberals see it as
"Bernie lite," an attempt to court Bernie Sanders' young voters by offering more government help to students and indebted graduates. Conservatives complain that
Clinton's plan will cost a fortune, yet she provided few details on how she would pay for it while also keeping tuition increases under control.
Both sides have a point. But her plan's
main flaw is that her solutions aren't innovative enough to attack the main problem: Relentless tuition increases and state budget cuts in the last decade have made
college unaffordable for many low- and middle-income students. Seven in 10 undergraduate students at public colleges take out loans.
Total student debt is now $1.35 trillion, and the average individual debt is almost $33,000.Here's Clinton's plan in a nutshell: In-state, public universities would be tuition-free for families of four making up to $85,000. The income cap would rise $10,000 a year until 2021, when families making up to $125,000, or about 80 percent of households, would be covered.
Problem solved? Not quite.
The Clinton plan is expensive: The 10-year-tab is $350 billion, about half of which would go toward tuition aid. And she would
rely on states to kick in matching funds for their students to participate. This would
force cooperating states to reverse some of their recent budget cuts, but it wouldn't force states to play along.
Comment: Israel: the "only democracy in the Middle East". And what a beacon of freedom and democratic values it is.