Free tuition — but at what cost?

Without safeguards, Clinton’s plan for public colleges could narrow access for needy students.

It seems self-evident that eliminating tuition at public colleges for most families, would increase access to higher education for lowincome and minority students. It would reverse a key trend limiting opportunity for the less affluent: a sustained shift of the cost of public higher education from taxpayers to students and their families.

But without the proper safeguards, such a program might still, paradoxically, narrow access. That’s because tuition-free public college could compound the stratification of post-secondary education into a two-tier system. Increasingly, low-income and minority students are being slotted into the least selective institutions with the fewest resources, while admission to elite campuses is awarded mostly to kids from the upper middle-class and beyond.

If tuition is eliminated at public universities for families with income up to $125,000, as Hillary Clinton has proposed, more upper-middle-class students who now attend private schools may decide that Austin, Ann Arbor or Berkeley are better bargains, and intensify competition for the limited slots available there. “It will have a bumping effect,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “For minorities and low-income students it will push them ... toward open admission and two-year colleges.”

Landmark research from Carnevale’s center demonstrates the problem. Although far more Latino and African American students attend post-secondary schools than two decades ago, most have been channeled into the least selective schools, which have the fewest resources to invest in students, and which produce weaker outcomes in completion and career earnings. Meanwhile, the nation’s 468 most competitive schools remain about four-fifths white, virtually unchanged from 20 years ago, and heavily tilted toward more affluent families.

That powerful sorting shapes public as well as private postsecondary schools. The Georgetown Center has calculated that kids from families earning $106,000 or more comprise 37% of all students in “very selective” public colleges while those from families earning less than $30,000 represent only 18%. In open-admission public colleges — the least selective schools and the least resource-rich — the proportions are almost exactly reversed.

Eliminating public university tuition for most families could encourage more low-income young people to pursue higher education notes Richard Kahlenberg, an expert on college access at the Century Foundation. But , he says, it wouldn’t address the reasons top public schools don’t admit more applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds: A fear of failing in the national rankings because of accepting students with lower test scores. Carnevale’s research shows most students with somewhat lower test scores and grades can succeed even at elite institutions with the right support; yet, says Kahlenberg, these schools are reluctant to invest in that support because that money won’t go to “reducing class sizes or other things that would increase [the] national rankings.”

If anything, ending public tuition could compound those problems by drawing more upper middle-class families now choosing private schools toward highvalue public options. This squeezing-out is already evident in the University of California system, where low-income students are much less likely to attend the most elite campuses (such as Berkeley, San Diego, and Los Angeles) than less competitive options (including Riverside and Merced).

Aides say Clinton is aware of these risks, and if elected, would design the tuition-free proposal to require states to enhance racial and class diversity at their public universities. But devising policies to achieve that goal, especially with the Supreme Court’s limits on affirmative action, isn’t easy.

One key may be building more capacity at public universities. Audrey Dow, senior vice president of the Campaign for College Opportunity, is right when she says, "we just have too few spots at our public universities." That’s especially true compared to the public college building boom that states including California and New York undertook for the baby boomers.

Eliminating tuition at public colleges could powerfully expand opportunity in an increasingly diverse U.S. But only if Washington and the states ensure that these new investments don’t merely reinforce old privileges.