The college-for-all argument becoming a Catch-22

Baby boomers who are nearing retirement talk about those old days when they worked a few hours every week when college was in session and all through the summers, at minimum wage jobs, and graduated with no loans and debts whatsoever.

Those days ended a long time ago.

Unfortunately, it is that boomer generation (I am not one of them!) that is now at the helm setting policies.  Which means, more often than not, they fail to understand how much things have changed at the ground level.  Even if they have children in college now.

Working full time in the summers, and twenty-plus hours during the regular terms, at minimum wages, seems like barely enough to get anybody even a cup of coffee anymore, leave alone paying for college.

With college being the required credential as high school was during the early boomer years, the percentage of students dutifully attending college straight out of high school has skyrocketed. Even if the government were to allocate to higher education amounts similar to those old days, the mere fact of higher numbers of students will mean a lower allocation per student, which will then require students to pay a lot more.  In reality, states have been decreasing their allocations over the years, while college costs have also gone up.

The net result: unless students are coming from affluent families, well, graduating with loans is what one would expect, and that is what we see happening.

The monies students pay now exceed the taxpayer support in quite a few states, including here in Oregon.  We just happen to be at the leading edge of that wave:

Oregon used to be considered a low-tuition state. But payments from students and their families now average $6,100 a year across public universities and community colleges, about 20 percent above the national average, the report found. Only 17 states ask students to pay more. 

"Only 17 states" will soon become more than 17.  We are approaching a psychological milestone:

Tuition has already amounted to more than half of the educational revenue in some individual systems, ranging from the University of California to the community colleges in Iowa and in South Carolina. But surpassing that threshold nationally is a gloomy milestone that reflects the deep state budget cuts that have hit public higher education since the beginning of the economic downturn and, at the same time, steady increases in enrollment.

At a national aggregate level, student payments for higher education will soon match taxpayer support.  A reality that the retiring baby boomers will find very difficult to comprehend when they compare it with their personal experiences.

Source: WSJ

If that is the case, then shouldn't the context make us question whether we should promote more college for everybody?  Yes, there are non-economic benefits to higher education.  But, if those non-economic benefits matter then we should pay for it.  However, we won't be paying for it because there is no freely available taxpayer money to allocate.  If politicians continue to advocate for college-for-all despite knowing all these, then they can be only irrational, right?