Conservatives Like Trump And Biden Don't Back The Idea Of Free College, But New Mexico Is Moving Ahead Anyway

Maggie Toulouse Oliver is New Mexico's Secretary of State and currently the progressive candidate for the U.S. Senate seat Tom Udall is retiring from. This morning she told me, in a statement, that "As a single mom who is still paying off student loans-- and has taken on additional loans to pay for my oldest son's college education-- I know how much this innovative plan will help New Mexicans. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is leading where Washington has failed. I look forward to bringing the lived experience of a single mom who worked her way through college to the U.S. Senate. And I look forward to taking bold New Mexico ideas, like universal free college tuition, with me to D.C. so that we can improve the lives of all American families."

You know how states are supposed to be the petri dish of innovative government? Yesterday, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that the state will pay the tuition for all students at New Mexico's 29 public two-year and four-year colleges. Bernie's platform in action! (Needless to say, Republicans and Status Quo Joe oppose these kinds of plans.) New Mexico will use revenues from oil production to pay for the program. Simon Romero and Dana Goldstein broke the story yesterday for the NY Times, emphasizing the universality of the plan and dubbing it "one of the boldest state-led efforts to expand access to higher education. The move comes," they wrote, "as many American families grapple with the rising cost of higher education and as discussions about free public college gain momentum in state legislatures and on the presidential debate stage. Nearly half of the states, including New York, Oregon and Tennessee, have guaranteed free two- or four-year public college to some students. But the New Mexico proposal goes further, promising four years of tuition even to students whose families can afford to pay the sticker price."

“I think we’re at a watershed moment,” said Caitlin Zaloom, a cultural anthropologist at New York University who has researched the impact of college costs on families. “It used to be that a high school degree could allow a young adult to enter into the middle class. We are no longer in that situation. We don’t ask people to pay for fifth grade and we also should not ask people to pay for sophomore year.”

By some measures, the tuition initiative will be the most ambitious in a growing national movement. College costs and student debt have emerged as major issues in the Democratic presidential primary, with two of the leading contenders for the nomination-- Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren-- promising to make all public colleges and universities free. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has a more limited proposal to eliminate community college tuition.

So far, states, not the federal government, have led the way-- sometimes out of a hope that a more educated work force would attract businesses and improve local economies. As of 2018, 17 states had programs promising free college to at least some students, according to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most of those programs cover tuition only at two-year institutions.

...Like the New York program, the New Mexico plan would cover only tuition, not living expenses, and the funds would be available only after a student drew from existing state aid programs and from federal grants.

But the New Mexico proposal does go further than New York’s Excelsior Scholarship in two regards: It is available to all students, regardless of family income, and it includes funds for adults looking to return to school at community colleges.

“This program is an absolute game changer for New Mexico,” Governor Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “In the long run, we’ll see improved economic growth, improved outcomes for New Mexican workers and families and parents.”

Officials contend that New Mexico would benefit most from a universal approach to tuition assistance. The state’s median household income is $46,744, compared with a national median of $60,336. Most college students in the state also come from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds; almost 65 percent of New Mexico undergraduates are among the nation’s neediest students, according to the state’s higher education department.

The new program in New Mexico would be open to recent graduates of high schools or high school equivalency programs in the state, and students must maintain a 2.5 grade point average. In contrast to other states, like Georgia, that have curbed access to public colleges by unauthorized immigrants, New Mexico would open the tuition program to all residents, regardless of immigration status.

Carmen Lopez-Wilson, the deputy secretary of New Mexico’s Higher Education Department, said the program would benefit about 55,000 students a year at an annual cost of $25 million to $35 million. She added that the state was trying to bolster its higher education system, which endured spending cuts of more than 30 percent per student from 2008 to 2018.

“We’re giving money directly to students,” Ms. Lopez-Wilson said. “This is the best way to begin rebuilding the infrastructure of higher education in New Mexico.”

Ms. Lopez-Wilson said the relatively low cost of the program reflected low tuition costs in the state, with many students already receiving forms of assistance. Other states that have less extensive tuition assistance proposals are spending far more.

A year of tuition at the state’s flagship campus, the University of New Mexico, costs $7,556 for state residents. At the state’s largest community college, Central New Mexico Community College, tuition costs are generally less than $3,000 per year.

New Mexico already has some of the lowest debt rates for graduates of four-year colleges. In the class of 2017, they owed $21,237 on average, compared with a national average of $28,650, according to the Institute for College Access & Success.

...[B]oth chambers in New Mexico are controlled by Democrats, and while fiscal conservatives still have considerable sway in the state, legislators have already shown willingness recently to increase spending on public education. State and federal spending on early childhood programs, including prekindergarten, is climbing to $546 million this year in New Mexico, a $135 million increase from the previous year.

In a departure from the belt-tightening after the 2008 financial crisis, New Mexico also gave raises to public-school teachers and the faculty and staff of the University of New Mexico this year.

The free-tuition plan points to the shifting political landscape in New Mexico, traditionally a swing state that was up for grabs by both major parties. It is now emerging as a bastion of Democratic power in the West, standing in contrast to other large oil-producing states controlled by Republicans. At the same time, an oil boom in the Permian Basin shared by New Mexico and Texas is lifting the state’s revenues.

In some ways, the burst of interest in free public college is a return to the nation’s educational past. As recently as the 1970s, some public university systems remained largely tuition-free.

As a bigger and more diverse group of undergraduates entered college in recent decades, costs rose, and policymakers began to promote the idea of a degree as less of a public benefit than a private asset akin to a mortgage, according to Professor Zaloom, of N.Y.U. Many states raised tuition, and students became more reliant on grants and loans.

“We should be looking at the examples from our own history,” Professor Zaloom said. Free college educations from the University of California, the City University of New York and other public systems, she added, have been “some of the most successful engines of mobility in this country.”

When we first endorsed Eva Putzova, one state over in Arizona, she told us she supports "fully publicly funded education from pre-K through college for all. Education is the great equalizer and foundation of any prosperous, civil society. Today, college students are $1.3 trillion in debt. This is a huge burden on them as they start their lives after school and enter the workforce.  We managed to provide a debt-free education to veterans after World War II, and to the baby boom generation as well. In 1969, in Arizona, annual tuition was $272 and one could earn that working in a minimum wage job for 1 month. Today's students in Arizona have to work for more than 6.5 months to pay for their year in college. Imagine what we could achieve if we approached education in a spirit of solidarity: today's graduates working and paying taxes which would allow a new generation to benefit from the same education they once received. Just like healthcare, education should be a right, not a privilege."

This is also of great concern to Milwaukie, Oregon mayor Mark Gamba, the current progressive challenger for the Oregon congressional seat held by conservative Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. It's one of the issues he's running on. "Our current system of secondary education here in America largely sets young people up for failure while theoretically setting them up for success," he told me last night. "Young adults coming out of college with massive debt can’t afford to take a job that pays poorly even though it might be the right stepping stone to the career they’ve always dreamed of, instead they are required to find a job that pays them well enough to keep up with their debt payment. It didn’t used to be this way, it shouldn’t be this way and it isn’t this way in many of the countries we compete with on the world market. Rather than a system of education designed to enrich bankers, we should have a system of education designed to have the most well-educated population in the world. That’s why I’m a strong proponent for free public college education for anyone carrying a decent GPA out of high school."

Jennifer Christie, the progressive candidate in an open Indiana congressional district in the suburbs north of Indianapolis, got back from walking the UAW picket line last night and wrote me that she "worked very hard to pay for my own college education and to pay off every single penny of my student debt. I had sleepless nights working 2nd and 3rd shifts in a nursing home to pay for my tuition while I was in school. I graduated with honors in both Chemistry and Biology... two degrees paid for mostly by me. I was the first to graduate from college in my family. So why do I support free college tuition? Because I know what a college degree did for me. Because we have tough problems to solve and education fosters innovation. Because it was so hard to fund it by myself. Because I don’t want my kids to have to do what I did. Because a simple tax on Wall Street speculation would pay for it. Because we bailed out Wall Street. Now it’s time for Wall Street to return the favor for my kids and yours. It will be the best investment they’ll ever make!"