Public education ain't so public these days.
Last month the federal government released a report warning of the increasing unaffordability of public universities nationwide, noting that while state funding sank by 12 percent from 2003 through 2012, median tuition shot up by 55 percent. As of 2012, state funding had dropped to 23 percent of public universities' overall funding. Meanwhile, 25 percent of funding-and climbing-is now coming from tuition. Translation: Students are paying more to fund public universities than the states.
Of course, the drastic rise in tuition isn't due to students and their families earning so much more. To hear Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tell it, America's working class is doing worse than it has since at least the Great Depression. Unable to afford a college degree on their own, students and their families are forced to take out massive loans, to the point where the current student debt is north of $1.2 trillion, $1 trillion of which is owed to the federal government. The average debt load for recent graduates is close to $30,000, and the confluence of higher tuition rates and the deep recession-which hit young people and the working class harder than anyone-has led to a rise in student loan defaults.
Instead of having a leg up after receiving their degrees, a lot of graduates feel glued to the floor.
None of this can be good for the country. What society can function if its young adults are shackled to a heap of debt? It does a country no good when only the children of its richest citizens are able to receive a college education without worrying about high monthly payments-or worse, defaulting on their loans and destroying their economic lives forever. I'm in this sinking boat too-trying to establish my career as a writer is tough enough without worrying about how my dream job is going to pay off $35,000 in student loans.
With all its talk of being the freest, most democratic nation the world has ever seen, it's embarrassing that America hasn't taken the one step that would ensure such claims: making public universities free to all.
Some readers might see me shipped off to Havana for suggesting something so radical, but hey, Cuba is one of many nations whose citizens attend public universities tuition-free. Germany recently made its public schools free to everyone, even foreigners. France, Italy and Spain offer free college education to their citizens, and so does the frigid utopia of Scandinavia. In our own hemisphere, Brazil and Argentina-to name a few-have no tuition at public universities, and the average cost of a college education in Canada is less than half of that in the United States.
And I've yet to touch on what free public universities would achieve toward making America a much fairer and more equal nation, racially and economically. It's why, 71 years ago this week, FDR included "the right to a good education" in his proposal for a "second Bill of Rights." President Obama's own proposal last week to make the first two years of community college free for everyone is an important step toward making higher education a right, just as a high-school education only became a right in the first half of the past century. With students from both ends of the economic spectrum eligible, hopefully America's community colleges will become a unique space for people from the working, middle and upper classes to mingle and develop a common sensibility.
As for the DePauls and Northwesterns of America, keep them private for all I care. They'd have to compete price-wise with tuition-free state colleges-but seeing how Harvard's $36 billion endowment is larger than half the economies of the world, something tells me they'd be just fine.
Hector Luis Alamo is a RedEye special contributor.
