Two national newspapers used the morning of President Obama’s State of the Union address to publish op-eds praising the spirit of his proposal to make two years of community college free, but taking aim at the project’s unintended consequences.
In The New York Times, the columnist David Brooks argues that improving college completion, not college access, is the more important goal. "The smart thing to do would be to scrap the Obama tuition plan," Mr. Brooks writes. "Students who go to community college free now have tragically high dropout rates. The $60 billion could then be spent on things that are mentioned in President Obama’s proposal—but not prioritized or fleshed out—which would actually increase graduation rates." Those include living expenses, guidance counselors, remedial education, and child care, he argues.
In USA Today, three Republican senators—all former college presidents—wrote that Mr. Obama was "in the right church but the wrong pew" when he made the proposal. The senators, led by Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, chair of the Senate’s education committee, argue that the Obama administration should not create a new federal program when it could simply encourage states to mimic the project’s ideological forebear, the Tennessee Promise. They also urged the passage of legislation, which Mr. Obama has expressed support for, that would simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, among other things. Mr. Alexander’s co-authors were Benjamin E. Sasse, of Nebraska, and Roy D. Blunt, of Missouri.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/prominent-columns-find-devils-in-details-of-obamas-free-college-plan/92499