115 F R E E C O L L E G E A M E R IC A N M O V E M E N t S F R E E C O L L E G E Why Free College is Necessary tressie McMillan Cottom Free college is not a new idea, but, with higher education costs (and student loan debt) dominating public perception, it’s one that appeals to more and more people—including me. the national debate about free, public higher education is long overdue. But let’s get a few things out of the way. College is the domain of the relatively privileged, and will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future, even if tuition is eliminated. As of 2012, over half of the U.S. population has “some college” or postsecondary education. that category includes everything from an auto-mechanics class at a for- profit college to a business degree from Harvard. Even with such a broadly conceived category, we are still talking about just half of all Americans. Why aren’t more people going to college? One obvious answer would be cost, especially the cost of tuition. But the problem isn’t just that col- lege is expensive. It is also that going to college is complicated. It takes cul- tural and social, not just economic, capital. It means navigating advanced courses, standardized tests, forms. It means figuring out implicit rules— rules that can change. Eliminating tuition would probably do very little to untangle the sailor’s knot of inequalities that make it hard for most Americans to go to college. It would not address the cultural and social barriers imposed by unequal K–12 schooling, which puts a select few students on the college pathway at the expense of millions of others. Neither would it address the chang- ing social milieu of higher education, in which the majority are now non- traditional students. (“Non-traditional” students are classified in different ways depending on who is doing the defining, but the best way to under- stand the category is in contrast to our assumptions of a traditional college student—young, unfettered, and continuing to college straight from high school.) How and why they go to college can depend as much on things like whether a college is within driving distance or provides one-on-one admis- sions counseling as it does on the price. 116 D IS S E N t · F A L L 2 0 1 5 Given all of these factors, free college would likely benefit only an out- lying group of students who are currently shut out of higher education because of cost—students with the ability and/or some cultural capital but without wealth. In other words, any conversation about college is a pretty elite one even if the word “free” is right there in the descriptor. the discussion about free college, outside of the Democratic primary race, has also largely been limited to community colleges, with some excep- tions by state. Because I am primarily interested in education as an affir- mative justice mechanism, I would like all minority-serving and historically black coll ...

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Why Free College is Necessary
tressie McMillan Cottom
Free college is not a new idea, but, with higher education costs
(and student
loan debt) dominating public perception, it’s one that appeals to
more and
more people—including me. the national debate about free,
public higher

3. education is long overdue. But let’s get a few things out of the
way.
College is the domain of the relatively privileged, and will
likely stay that
way for the foreseeable future, even if tuition is eliminated. As
of 2012, over
half of the U.S. population has “some college” or postsecondary
education.
that category includes everything from an auto-mechanics class
at a for-
profit college to a business degree from Harvard. Even with
such a broadly
conceived category, we are still talking about just half of all
Americans.
Why aren’t more people going to college? One obvious answer
would
be cost, especially the cost of tuition. But the problem isn’t just
that col-
lege is expensive. It is also that going to college is complicated.
It takes cul-
tural and social, not just economic, capital. It means navigating
advanced
courses, standardized tests, forms. It means figuring out
implicit rules—
rules that can change.
Eliminating tuition would probably do very little to untangle the
sailor’s
knot of inequalities that make it hard for most Americans to go
to college.
It would not address the cultural and social barriers imposed by
unequal
K–12 schooling, which puts a select few students on the college
pathway

4. at the expense of millions of others. Neither would it address
the chang-
ing social milieu of higher education, in which the majority are
now non-
traditional students. (“Non-traditional” students are classified in
different
ways depending on who is doing the defining, but the best way
to under-
stand the category is in contrast to our assumptions of a
traditional college
student—young, unfettered, and continuing to college straight
from high
school.) How and why they go to college can depend as much
on things like
whether a college is within driving distance or provides one-on-
one admis-
sions counseling as it does on the price.
116
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L

5. L
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0
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5
Given all of these factors, free college would likely benefit only
an out-
lying group of students who are currently shut out of higher
education
because of cost—students with the ability and/or some cultural
capital but
without wealth. In other words, any conversation about college
is a pretty
elite one even if the word “free” is right there in the descriptor.
the discussion about free college, outside of the Democratic
primary
race, has also largely been limited to community colleges, with
some excep-
tions by state. Because I am primarily interested in education as
an affir-
mative justice mechanism, I would like all minority-serving and
historically
black colleges (HBCUs)—almost all of which qualify as four-
year degree
institutions—to be included. HBCUs disproportionately serve
students fac-
ing the intersecting effects of wealth inequality, systematic K–
12 disparities,
and discrimination. For those reasons, any effort to use higher
education
as a vehicle for greater equality must include support for

6. HBCUs, allowing
them to offer accessible degrees with less (or no) debt.
the Obama administration’s free community college plan,
expanded
in July to include grants that would reduce tuition at HBCUs, is
a step in
the right direction. Yet this is only the beginning of an
educational justice
agenda. An educational justice policy must include institutions
of higher
education but cannot only include institutions of higher
education. Educa-
tional justice says that schools can and do reproduce
inequalities as much
as they ameliorate them. Educational justice says one hundred
new Univer-
sities of Phoenix is not the same as access to high-quality
instruction for
the maximum number of willing students. And educational
justice says that
jobs programs that hire for ability over “fit” must be linked to
millions of
new credentials, no matter what form they take or how much
they cost to
obtain. Without that, some free college plans could reinforce
prestige divi-
sions between different types of schools, leaving the most
vulnerable stu-
dents no better off in the economy than they were before.
Free college plans are also limited by the reality that not
everyone wants
to go to college. Some people want to work and do not want to
go to col-
lege forever and ever—for good reason. While the “opportunity

7. costs” of
spending four to six years earning a degree instead of working
used to be
balanced out by the promise of a “good job” after college, that
rationale no
longer holds, especially for poor students. Free-ninety-nine will
not change
that.
I am clear about all of that . . . and yet I don’t care. I do not
care if free
college won’t solve inequality. As an isolated policy, I know
that it won’t. I
don’t care that it will likely only benefit the high achievers
among the sta-
tistically unprivileged—those with above-average test scores,
know-how, or
financial means compared to their cohort. Despite these
problems, today’s
debate about free college tuition does something extremely
valuable. It
reintroduces the concept of public good to higher education
discourse—a
concept that fifty years of individuation, efficiency fetishes, and
a rightward
117
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9. R
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drift in politics have nearly pummeled out of higher education
altogether.
We no longer have a way to talk about public education as a
collective good
because even we defenders have adopted the language of
competition.
President Obama justified his free community college plan on
the grounds
that “Every American . . . should be able to earn the skills and
education
necessary to compete and win in the twenty-first century
economy.” Mean-
while, for-profit boosters claim that their institutions allow
“greater access”
to college for the public. But access to what kind of education?
those of
us who believe in viable, affordable higher ed need a different
kind of lan-
guage. You cannot organize for what you cannot name.
Already, the debate about if college should be free has forced us

10. all to
consider what higher education is for. We’re dusting off old
words like class
and race and labor. We are even casting about for new words
like “precar-
iat” and “generation debt.” the Debt Collective is a prime
example of this.
the group of hundreds of students and graduates of (mostly) for-
profit col-
leges are doing the hard work of forming a class-based identity
around debt
as opposed to work or income. the broader cultural conversation
about stu-
dent debt, to which free college plans are a response, sets the
stage for that
kind of work. the good of those conversations outweighs for me
the limited
democratization potential of free college.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology
at Virginia Common-
wealth University and a contributing editor at Dissent. Her book
Lower Ed: How For-
Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality is forthcoming from the New
Press.
Copyright of Dissent (00123846) is the property of University
of Pennsylvania Press and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted
to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.

11. B
efore the advent of the inter-
net, higher education course
materials were a scarce
resource, restricted to those
who could afford to enrol.
Unfair, perhaps, but face-to-face contact
with lecturers, a seat in a lecture hall, a
place at a seminar, a library ticket: all these
things cost money.
However, in an age of digital abundance,
free-to-use, free-to-modify text, audio,
video, user-generative and interactive tools
can now reproduce the vast majority of uni-
versity course materials at negligible cost.
This possibility flips the dominant debate
about higher education. Rather than ask
how we can make restricted access fairer,
should we simply let everybody in?
Why limit access to online higher educa-
tional materials, when educational opportu-
nity is so closely linked to social and eco-
nomic outcomes? Why should the (sup-
posed) vast sea of potential users of higher
education not be let past the degree course
dam?
The�rise�of�open�
courseware
Open courseware – freely-accessible, inter-

12. net-provider-cleared, comprehensive, uni-
versity course materials – is already begin-
ning to take off. Web-published course syl-
labi, reading lists with links to open access
articles, course and lecture notes,
video/audio lectures and audio-synched
slideshows, together with essay assignments,
problem sets, past exam papers and full-text
readings, are now being used by self-learn-
ers, existing students, and young entrepre-
neurs worldwide.
A small number of vanguard universities
are already publishing swathes of their
undergraduate and postgraduate course
materials, most notably the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US,
whose open courseware site, ocw.mit.edu,
has been established, employing just 26
people.
MIT released its pilot version of open
courseware in late 2002, placing 50 courses
online, with Spanish and Portuguese trans-
public�policy�research�–�March-May�200836
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Should�higher
education�course
materials�be�
free�to�all?
In�recent�months,�UC�Berkeley�and�the�Massachusetts
Institute�of�Technology�have,�respectively,�announced
and�achieved�their�intention�to�make�entire�lecture�and
course�materials�freely�available�online�– to�anyone.�
Leo�Pollak argues�that�while�British�universities�lag�far
behind�in�online�course�provision,�the�UK�is�uniquely
placed�to�innovate�further�than�MIT,�and�to�once�agai
n
radically�redefine�the�basis�of�opportunity,�learning�and
social�mobility.�
lations added shortly after. In just four
years, MIT’s open courseware unit has
overseen the publication of complete edu-
cational materials for over 1,800 of its
courses, almost its entire course catalogue,
with materials contributed from 90 per
cent of its professors. In November 2007,
they finally achieved ‘steady state’, with
200 new and updated courses to be added
annually.
Kyoto, Tokyo, Yale, ParisTech and 200
other universities worldwide have followed
suit.1 In addition to these open courseware
offerings, UC Berkeley last October
launched its own YouTube page, with full
lecture courses placed freely online. On a

15. similar tack, the Connexions programme at
Rice University (Houston, Texas) has
explored new models of dynamic peer
review scholarship, while simultaneously
developing high-quality open educational
resources, communally generated by aca-
demics.
These leading global universities have
been making their existing offerings univer-
sally available online, providing for a show-
case of their teaching practices, a more flexi-
ble learning experience for students within
and without the university, and a new
dimension of institutional morale.
As the open courseware movement
expands and innovates at institutions
worldwide, the UK’s sole offering comes
from the Open University and its
OpenLearn programme. Beyond this, the
current UK model operates with those
paying partial tuition fees receiving the full
benefits of a face-to-face educational expe-
rience, while all others receive little per-
sonal tangible benefit from higher educa-
tion, be it face-to-face or online. This,
despite the fact that over 70 per cent of the
costs of higher education’s teaching and
research costs are covered by the taxpayer
(Dearing 1997).
The return on this public investment was
based on the idea of an elite class of highly
skilled graduates unleashing their learning

16. and human capital on a grateful, taxpaying,
underskilled population of non-graduates.
This idea, thanks to far-reaching digital and
economic change, no longer has the back-
ing of economic evidence, nor of social sen-
timent.
The�Open�Access�proposal
If Britain is to maintain (or, indeed, regain)
its position as a progressive innovator in
‘world class’ institutions, it must keep up,
and go further, than the pioneers at MIT. I
propose the Government takes swift action
on the following:
1. To establish a centralised online hub of diverse
British open courseware offerings at the free domain
www.ocw.ac.uk, accessible to teachers, students and
the general public alike.
This site would have several purposes, solv-
ing a number of problems in higher educa-
tion today:
i. It would provide an integrated single
point of reference for the range of high-
quality guidance and information on
effective teaching practice, promoting
diverse teaching methods while sharing
best practice and driving up standards. A
central open courseware site would also
better enable educators, students and
recruiters to assess the comparative value
of a plurality of university programmes in
Britain.
ii. The seemingly intractable opposition

17. between academic autonomy and public
accountability would be overcome with
online ‘distance auditing’, possible for
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public�policy�research�–�March-May�2008 37
In�just�four�years,�MIT’s�open
courseware�unit�has�overseen
the�publication�of�complete
educational�materials�for�
over�1,800�of�its�courses
1. For links and details of open courseware-providing
universities, see www.ocwconsortium.org, site of the Open
Courseware
Consortium, which, since 2005, has been aiding the
development and sharing of open courseware models and setups
between contributing universities.
courses that publish comprehensive and
up-to-date course materials. This princi-
ple would establish a more efficient
mechanism for teaching and (if published

19. openly) research assessment, freeing up
time and resources for actual teaching
and actual research.
iii. With its onus on encouraging consump-
tion of diverse course materials in differ-
ent areas of study, such a hub would
help guard against restrictive framings
of syllabus materials, limited course pre-
scriptions and research literatures. This
would go some way to contributing to a
reassessment of research funding met-
rics, away from narrow citation towards
a broader and richer research. This
could, in the long term, help to over-
come some of the limitations of peer
review as a critical, competitive exercise,
creating space for stifled intellectual
innovations.
2. To establish the right and capacity for non-stu-
dents and non-graduates to take the same exams as
enrolled students, through the provision of open
access exam sessions.
i. The cost of open exam entrance would
be covered by a premium fee paid by
the entrant. This would be small
enough so as not to be prohibitive, and
yet great enough to discourage abuse of
the right, as well as cover the cost of
printing, staging and marking the
examination.
ii. An ‘open degree’ course qualification
would be granted, designating the specif-

20. ic content of the course papers taken, and
would complement – rather than com-
pete with – existing face-to-face course
degrees. Guarantees would be in place to
ensure open access exam entrants are
tested to the same level as face-to-face stu-
dents, are marked as stringently, and as
part of the same invisible entrance sys-
tem.
iii. Specific courses in which hands-on learn-
ing is essential – towards professional
licences, as in medical degrees, for exam-
ple – would not be included in the sys-
tem.
3. To pass an Open Access Act through Parliament,
establishing a new class of open degree, achieved
solely using open courseware.
i. An open courseware/certification
enabling act would (following the recom-
mendations of the Gowers Review of
Intellectual Property [Gowers 2006])
extend copyright exemptions on all tax-
payer-funded educational materials.
ii. To minimise interference in academic
teaching and research, specialised open
courseware publication teams would be
put in place at each university to assem-
ble and maintain their open courseware
offerings.
iii. The Act would provide server capacity
and other necessary infrastructure

21. upgrades for managing open courseware
content and for hosting its distribution of
content online. Additional equipment
would constitute video cameras, micro-
phones, scanning equipment and auto-
mated content management systems (as
per the model being developed at UC
Berkeley).
iv. It would provide pre-emptive regulation
mechanisms for any subsequent support
services that arise – essay feedback,
supervision, exam practice, and so on –
for those using a university’s open course-
ware and pursuing its open degree.
v. It would provide for the functional inte-
gration and adjustment of the various
quango remits – the Learning and Skills
Council, Office for Fair Access, Adult
Learning Inspectorate, British
Educational Communications and
Technology Agency, Joint Information
Systems Committee, and the Quality
Assurance Agency.
vi. An explicit guarantee would be given
that there be no deviation from or damp-
ening of the current policy to expand
access to enrolled face-to-face university
learning.
4. To conduct a high-profile public information
campaign, promoting the opportunities afforded by
open courseware and open access examinations and
degrees, targeted at adult learners, excluded minori-

22. ties and students at pre-university age.
public�policy�research�–�March-May�200838
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The�value�of�a�‘proper’
education
A successful implementation of the open
access policies sketched above would enable
any British citizen, at any point in life, to
develop their knowledge, skills and capaci-
ties, and have those capacities formally
recognised in the work arena. The fear will
be that this will devalue existing degrees. If
anyone can obtain a degree online, might
the distinction of the degree, and the inten-
sity of workload and value of face-to-face
learning involved in achieving it, be
watered down?
In fact, the value of a ‘face-to-face’ over
online educational experience would
remain and be reinstated under an open
access system. Making course materials

24. freely available does not undermine the
added value of the face-to-face benefits of
education. An Open degree would be clear-
ly signified as such, indicating the different
experience and work involved in an organ-
ised learning environment.
Moreover, open courseware elsewhere
has created an online visibility in lecture
teachings, encouraging the sharing of best
practice in teaching and driving up stan-
dards. This has helped establish a new
guarantee for the quality of teaching inter-
action for enrolled students that would not
be possible for online learners.2
This fear of inflation in the value of the
degree – the more people have them, the
fewer social and occupational positions one
can ‘buy’ with them – is already real. As
governments have attempted to widen uni-
versity participation through the expansion
of enrolled learning provision, so society
becomes ever more saturated with certifi-
cates, thus reducing their relative value
(Collins 1979). The notion of a ‘credential
crisis’ has never been more applicable to
Britain than it is today. The effect of more
people getting any level of qualification is
simply to delay the drawbridge closing on
social opportunity to Masters, internships
and work experience.
But open access degrees could actually
give new credibility to ‘the degree’, while

25. simultaneously widening participation in
higher learning. Instead of degrees being
merely certificates to be bought, worked for,
then deployed in the labour market, they
would become a more consistent measure of
an individual’s knowledge and learning
capacity, wherever they are from, however
old they may be.
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public�policy�research�–�March�2008-May�2008 39
COURSE PROVISION
Enrolled, structured
time-scheduled learning
experience with added benefits of
an interactive face-to-face access
to teachers.
Social network and ritual benefits
of university learning
(+ open courseware Syllabi,
reading lists with links to open
access articles and
out-of-copyright/copyright exempt
materials, lecture/course notes,

27. audio-synched slide-shows essay
assignments, problem sets, past
exam papers.)
Enrolled,
face-to-face learning
Independent, online
learning
HIGHER EDUCATION
Examination candidacy,
assessment and certification
2. The work of sociologist John Thompson has demonstrated the
historical affect of visibility (1996, 2000), most notably in
the political field, where the ‘new visibility’ brought about by
new media not only introduced a new dimension to politi-
cal accountability and to quality of governance, but also new
attendant risks, in the potential for scandal. Such visibility in
the field of scholarly education would carry no such risk, with
the control of content provision and representation of self
firmly in the hands of educators, providing a chance for
reputation and trust to be established anew, to a new generation
of students and stakeholders, and to a far wider audience.
Figure�1.�Routes�to�formal�accreditation�under�an�open
�courseware/certification�system.
Note:�this�process�would�not�apply�to�courses�involvin
g�hands-on�kinesthetic�learning

28. The�value�of�the�public
academic��
Concern from academics is likely to centre
on the impact of open courseware on the
potential to make a living from the private
resale educational course materials. For
those academics operating in departments
subject to severe budgetary constraints, the
right to offer research or ‘consultancy’ serv-
ices elsewhere, confined to the sponsoring
company or public agency, may seem sacro-
sanct. However, with the establishment of
any new common space – with a field of
materials available for use, reuse and modi-
fication – new business opportunities and
societal benefits would inevitably arise.3
As the economists Shapiro and Varian
have demonstrated, giving knowledge
products away at no or marginal cost may
not be incompatible with generating money
from those products (Shapiro and Varian
1998). Indeed, this is the orthodoxy of the
most successful web corporations –
MySpace, Google, Facebook, and a range
of open source providers – and is emerging
as an organising principle of new business
models within the music industry.
Moreover, as per the current drive to
open up the use of public sector information,
led by the Guardian’s ‘Free our data’ cam-
paign4, the potential benefits for economic
and social innovation following the open
use, reuse and modification of a knowledge

29. and data common are ample. Even the most
recent Government-commissioned studies
on taxpayer-funded data are pointing in this
direction (Newberry et al 2008).
Implementing an open access higher
education would let the civic and political
role of universities flourish. Democracy
demands that the public have an open,
informed debate about a range of critical
issues, affecting science, domestic and inter-
national policy. But the real information,
evidence and ideas on such topics remain
restricted to those in possession of the elu-
sive, expensive keys to understanding: a
university library pass or journal logins.
Furthermore, open source higher educa-
tion could actually lessen the bureaucratic
load on the academy. It has long been sup-
posed that academic autonomy, free from
state and corporate interests, is at odds with
public accountability (Baert and Shipman
2005), but open courseware and open access
research publication could in fact enhance
both. Visible teaching and open access
research publication would enable a more
efficient mechanism of ‘distance auditing’ of
academia, freeing up time and resources for
actual teaching and research, going some
way to attenuating the long-standing con-
cerns of academics across the sector.5
Far from diminishing the prestige of an
academic institution, the experience of MIT

30. has shown that a system of open courseware
can have profound positive effects on staff
and student morale, and on alumni support.
Further, by changing the nature of the
teaching process itself, offering the prospect
of an audience running potentially into the
millions, open courseware could be a spur
to high quality and innovative teaching
practices; and enhance the public status of
academics across society.
A�progressive�distinction�
Open courseware has already delivered
enormous and unexpected benefits to its
users and its producers, and yet, its full
emancipatory potential – of incentivising
and empowering all citizens to demonstrate
their actual ability – remains continually
skirted around for fear of change, and a
poverty of imagination. The presentation of
such options allows for nothing short of a
government litmus test on whether it pos-
sesses the requisite ambition for the citizens
it serves and on whether it is prepared to
public�policy�research�–�March-May�200840
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3. The Cambridge economist Rufus Pollock has argued
convincingly that there exists a calculable opportunity cost to a
wide range of restrictive intellectual monopolies; not merely to
individuals, innovative firms, to jobs, consumers and to the
wider economy, but, most crucially, to the providers of the
‘first copy’, the original content producers (Pollock 2006).
4. www.freeourdata.org.uk/
5. For details of the opposition to the Research Assessment
Exercise from the UCU, Britain’s largest union representing
uni-
versity educators, see downloads at
www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1442
stand aside while so many individuals – of
different age, background and constraint –
find their development thwarted and their
potential squandered to a system that does
not always fit their learning styles, their pas-
sions and their disposition.
The swift incorporation and implementa-
tion of the open access policy programme
would incur a number of distinct political
advantages too. Britain’s standing as a bea-
con of intellectual development and cultural
collaboration would be affirmed and
strengthened, and through our extensive
diplomatic networks, the British Council,
and Commonwealth links, the exercise of
what Joseph Nye describes as ‘soft power’

33. would be enhanced considerably (Nye
2005).
On the domestic agenda, those voicing a
hypocritical ‘commitment’ to social justice
would be exposed as still wedded to pre-digi-
tal notions of artificial scarcity and pre-digital
notions of educational enclosure, with the
limited skills, low productivity and spiritless
work that goes with it. Moreover, Gordon
Brown’s (perhaps well-earned) reputation as
a tactical overlord, guarded in access and
tentative in action, would be blown apart. To
be seen making the case for open courseware
and certification and resisting the inevitable
protests of privileged voices fighting for their
exclusivity would re-establish the link to a
public not impartial to public services free at
the point of use, and would become
emblematic of the vision of the Britain for
which Gordon Brown postponed a general
election in order to articulate.
In the Open University (OU), Britain
pioneered a new model of universal access
to higher education, with degrees available
to all citizens regardless of age or formal
qualifications. In an open courseware and
certification system, there exists the poten-
tial to introduce a more effective and less
hypocritical model of universal opportunity,
in which ready Web access remains the
final barrier to ambition, knowledge and
attainment.
What would Michael Young, founder of

34. the Open University, have said to present
day Labour ministers, regarding the possibil-
ities of open courseware? What would
Harold Wilson, who judged the formation of
the OU as his greatest achievement as Prime
Minister, have urged when seeing the chance
for the OU principle to be extended, almost
indefinitely? These leaders of the Labour
movement took on those who dismissed
open education as a ‘blithering nonsense’.
Will the current Labour leaders, who may
expect similar tenors of opposition, do so?
With the Confederation of British
Industry and the Trades Union Congress
both in fits over Britain’s skills gap, and all
parties trying to demonstrate a substantive
commitment to social mobility, the fact
remains that with a little political courage
our publicly funded educational resources
can be made infinitely, digitally abundant,
at a cost close to zero. Higher education,
free at the point of use, and at the click of a
button: what better way to truly ‘unlock the
talents of the British people’?
Leo Pollak is a researcher and activist. To view the
full copy of this analysis and advocacy, visit
www.opentlc.org, or to offer feedback email
[email protected] The author would like to
thank Sophie Moullin for editorial support on this
article.
Baert P and Shipman A (2005) ‘Universities under siege?
Accountability and Trust in the Contemporary

35. Academy’, European Societies 7 (1) 2005: 157-185
Collins R (1979) Credential Society New York: Academic
Press
Dearing R (1997) Higher Education in the Learning
Society London: HMSO
Gowers A (2006) Gowers Review of Intellectual Property
London: HMSO
Newberry D, Bently L and Pollock R (February 2008)
Models of Public Sector Information Provision via
Trading Funds. Available at:
www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45136.pdf
Nye J (2005) Soft Power: the means to success in world pol-
itics New York: Public Affairs
Pollock R (2006) The Value of the Public Domain London:
Institute for Public Policy Research. Available at:
www.ippr.org.uk/publicationsandreports/publication.as
p?id=482
Shapiro C and Varian HR (1998) Information Rules: A
Strategic Guide to the Network Economy Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Business School Press
Thompson JB (1996) The Media and Modernity: A Social
Theory of Media Cambridge: Polity Press
Thompson JB (2000) Political Scandal: Power and
Visibility in the Media Cambridge: Polity Press
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public�policy�research�–�March-May�2008 41
Views
IS COLLEGE still affordable? More than half of the families
considering higher education for their children use tuition price
to eliminate a given college from further consideration.
Students are borrowing increasingly more money, and total
student-loan debt now exceeds $1.3 trillion. Politicians claim
that the national economy is being slowed because student debt
is preventing young college graduates from buying homes or
starting families -- or even moving out of their parents' homes.
It's little wonder that institutions of higher education have
become targets of ridicule and scorn.
On the surface, this antipathy may seem warranted.
The cost of higher education seems to have risen far more
rapidly than that of most other goods and services. And
concerns about the salaries of some presidents and the cost of
Division I athletics continue to attract attention. But let's
examine the facts.
At four-year public institutions, the average list price
for tuition and fees has risen 114 percent, to $9,410 in inflation-
adjusted dollars, over the past 20 years. But the average net
price has risen by just 48 percent over the same time, to $3,980.

38. Along and steepening decline in state financial support of
public colleges is responsible for most of the tuition increase.
As measured by dollars of appropriation per $1,000 of income,
state appropriations to public colleges and universities fell by
43 percent from 1990 to 2015.
The average list price for private-college tuition and fees rose
by 70 percent over the past 20 years, to $32,405. But the
average net price rose by just 32 percent over the same period,
to $14,890. At most private colleges, prices actually declined
between 2008 and 2013. (The university where I work, for
example, froze tuition in 2012 and hasn't increased it since.)
So, because of significant increases in institutional financial
aid, the actual increase in the cost of tuition and fees has been
less than half the increase in the published price of tuition and
fees -- but families turned off by high prices never learn how
much they would have really paid, because they never applied
in the first place.
The affordability of any product or service is partly a function
of its price and partly a function of the relative affluence of the
consumer. So can today's families afford college? In inflation-
adjusted dollars, from 1984 to 2014, those in the top 5 percent
of family income saw their average income increase by 79
percent, to an average of $370,085. Families in the middle 20
percent of income saw an increase of 16 percent, to $66,899-
But families in the bottom 20 percent of income experienced a
1-percent drop in average income, to just $16,110.
And all of the growth in income was between 1984 and 2004.
During the past decade, almost all families saw their inflation-
adjusted incomes either stagnate or shrink. For example,
families in the top 5 percent saw, on average, no growth in
income; the middle-income families saw a 2-percent decline;
and families in the bottom percentile experienced a 9-percent
decline.
Thus, although the 20-year increases in net tuition and fees at
public and private colleges were most likely not a problem for
families in the top 5 percent of income, those increases were a

39. real challenge for families in the middle 20 percent and were
devastating to those in the bottom 20 percent.
It is understandable, then, on the basis of cost alone, why the
percentage of high-school graduates from the lowest 20 percent
who enroll in college fell from 56 percent in 2008 to less than
46 percent in 2013.
There is no question that higher-education leaders have a
responsibility to make their institutions affordable for students
from all income levels. As a group, we have been too slow to
acknowledge that responsibility and to respond accordingly. To
be fair, however, it is in only in the past few years that we have
seen significant price resistance to our costs (some very rich
and famous institutions have yet to see price resistance). And in
our capitalist system, one tends to charge as much as one can
get for a product or service.
Yet a significant part of college affordability rests not
with colleges themselves but with an economic structure that, in
the absence of policy to the contrary, defaults to a situation in
which a few individuals amass most of the wealth. This has
occurred at an increasing rate in the United States since the
1950s. The concentration of wealth at the top of the economic
spectrum is seen by many economists as an enormous problem:
Productivity has increased in virtually every part of the
economy, but wages have not come close to keeping pace.
More families are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends
meet because their incomes have not risen along with increases
in the cost of living. Big-ticket items such as a
college education seem increasingly unaffordable -- because
they are.
Yet political leaders appear intent on ignoring the elephant in
the room. It is far easier for them to cast blame on colleges than
it is to advocate for changes in economic policies that cater to
the wealthy and punish the poor and working class. Dealing
with the growing income and wealth inequality in this country
is the job of state and national political leaders, and it is up to
us to ensure that they accept that burden rather than shove all of

40. the responsibility for college affordability back on us.
~~~~~~~~
By DONALD J. FARISH
Donald J. Farish is president of Roger Williams University.