“As president, I will get rid of the unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs to increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree.” Those words from Vice President Kamala Harris signal a major shift in higher education policy, one which recognizes that earning a college degree costs too much, and not every job should require one.
Since the late 1960s, progressives have supported the expansion of financial aid for college in the belief that a college degree was the key to expanding the American Dream. Pell Grants, student loans, and college tax incentives were all enacted and expanded under Democratic Administrations.
For many years this strategy worked. College enrollments dramatically increased, rising from 8.5 million in 1970 and peaking at around 21 million in 2010. In addition, there are now more women undergraduates than men and some 45% of students come from diverse populations.
But this policy also has a cost. The expansion of federal aid for higher education allowed colleges to raise tuition at rates far exceeding inflation, and total student loan debt is now more than $1.74 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.
As Taylor Maag noted in a paper for the center-left think tank PPI, most Americans (62%) do not have a college degree, yet we spend three times as much on aid for higher education than we do for workforce development. Furthermore, colleges and universities have not done their part to make sure that those students are paying a fair price. Instead, they have dramatically increased the size of their administrative workforce, tried to cover up their unwillingness to manage expenditures with higher tuition and more junk fees (like charging students a fee to graduate), created more online degrees, and dramatically increased the number of international students who can afford to pay full price.
Vice President Harris’ proposal recognizes we cannot simply subsidize our way out of this problem. It acknowledges that young Americans have choices, and if they exercise them, they may find a better path towards success. For this she should be applauded.
But it’s also time to call on colleges and universities to do their fair share. Getting the cost of tuition and fees under control must become a priority if taxpayers are going to continue to be asked to subsidize the cost of a college education. This means college and university presidents must cut costs and reduce administrative bloat. They also need to charge faculty with redesigning their curriculum so that more students can finish degrees in 3 years (and cut tuition costs by up to 25%), as they do in other countries.
A future Harris Administration could help move this process forward by tying future increases in student financial aid to real reductions in the cost of tuition and fees. They could also mandate, as states like Texas and Ohio have, that schools reward students for work completed before they enroll in college, such as automatically awarding credit for scores of 3 on AP exams.
Vice President Harris has taken an important step in the right direction on higher education policy. Recognizing that college is important, but not the only pathway to success, shows she understands that young Americans deserve more choice when it comes to their future careers. By leveraging the purchasing power of the federal government, she can create more opportunity for those who chose not to earn a college degree, as well as making college more affordable by holding school presidents more accountable.