More homework to be done on tuition aid program

The Excelsior Scholarship Program, the free-tuition program currently proposed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and heavily promoted by former presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is supposed to bridge the gap between the cost of college tuition and what state and federal financial aid gives students.

It could also be the blueprint for future student assistance in Oregon, and elsewhere – but it’s not without flaws.

The program would be available to students whose annual household income is less than $100,000 (rising to $125,000 by 2019). It would be available only toward New York’s state schools but would expand tuition assistance to cover both two- and four-year institutions, where previously only two-year schools have been covered.

This is what is referred to as a last-dollar scholarship plan – a plan that covers the last few dollars a student would need to go to college. 

According to NBC News, New York state has the largest public university system in the U.S., with over 440,000 students spread among 64 college campuses. What’s more, the American Community Survey found that of the 7.2 million households in New York, almost 80 percent fall under the $125,000 income limit.

When most people, especially students, look at a program like this, is seems like a great thing. Who wouldn’t want help with their tuition so they don’t have to take loans to help with the cost of their schooling?

Upon review, though, the plan might not do what most people would think. The only people it seems to help initially are middle- and upper-middle class students. That’s because this program only gives money to students after government and private grants and scholarships are taken into account. Most of the students who have an annual household income of less than $50,000 already qualify for enough grants and scholarships to go to at least a two-year school.

In this light, we can see the plan is geared toward helping students whose annual household income falls between $50,000 and $125,000. So, it’s not exactly the all-encompassing program it seems to be.

Currently the average annual tuition for an in-state resident in New York to attend a two-year college is $4,664, and for a four-year school, $7,403. In Oregon, the in-state average for a two-year school is $4,256, and for a four-year school, $9,941 according to collegetuitioncompare.com.

These costs are pretty comparable, so assuming that this works in New York, this may be the foundation program states like Oregon would use to build their own last-dollar tuition legislation.

While there may be some great upsides for middle-class students, there are other factors to consider. When you give free tuition to 80 percent of your student population to attend only state schools, private schools may see a huge drop in their numbers and could be looking at dark times ahead.

This would be like the government opening a grocery store and giving away free food: If that happened, how long do you think Safeway would stay in business? What about the other, smaller grocery stores?

Also, are state schools able to handle the inevitable influx of students that would come with “free tuition for all”? This could mean larger class sizes, and a strain on the infrastructure and facilities of the current state campuses.

What’s more, tuition is just one portion of a student’s education costs. The plan doesn’t do anything to help cover housing, fees, food, textbook and other costs – which continue to fall more heavily on lower-income students.

Regardless, this could be a great help for students whose parents can’t or won’t help them with tuition. Making sure that students can attend college without dragging themselves into crippling debt is the responsibility of any modern society. For we live in a world that requires a college education to do much more than just scrape by, in most cases – that’s just plain and simple truth. As American citizens, we need to make sure that we strive to make our country the best, and most-educated, that we are able.

Programs such as this may be what are necessary to make that happen, but we need to make sure we don’t jump into anything headfirst. We need to make educated decisions about education.

A jump in student enrollment would require more faculty, more classrooms, and more staff to run the school, which means tuition for everyone across the board may rise as well.

Is this the foundation for a plan to bring America to the forefront of higher education? Let’s make sure we do our homework first, so we don’t fail our future.

A similar program that occurs in Oregon is the Oregon Promise, which allocates some money to qualifying graduating high school seniors. The scholarship is distributed to incoming college freshmen students attending two-year schools.

Oregon Promise is an experimental program, as this year’s qualified college freshmen recipients are the state’s first group to benefit from the program.