Obama's College Plan Bows to Elites

President Obama has announced a plan to make community college "as free and universal as high school." A lot could be said about this plan, and most of it already has been--see Tyler Cowen for a comprehensive roundup with a bottom line I endorse: "Overall my take is that the significant gains are to be had at the family level and at the primary education level, and that the price of community college is not a major bottleneck under the status quo."

The major barriers to completing college do not include community-college tuition, which is low for everyone, and basically free for low-income families (you automatically qualify for a Pell Grant if your family income is less than $24,000 a year, and many others qualify above that line). Libby Nelson offers the wan defense that universal programs may enjoy greater support than those targeted at the poor, which would be more compelling if community college weren't already basically free for low-income families.

Whether or not you think this program is a good idea depends on what you think the effects will be. Will it primarily:

Offer a subsidy to middle-class kids who don't really need the money?

Encourage middle-class families to transfer their kids to community college for the first two years of school, and thus help to moderate college costs?

Encourage financially constrained students who might not have gone to college to enter the system en route to a degree?

Encourage marginal students with a low chance of completing a career-enhancing degree to attend school, mostly wasting government money and their own time?

Obviously, effects #2 and #3 are more attractive as a policy goal than effects #1 and #4. Unfortunately, I'm pretty skeptical that they represent the most likely outcomes. Middle-class families already have the option of saving thousands upon thousands of dollars by enrolling their kids in community college for the first two years, keeping up their grade point average, and then transferring to a four-year school. The average tuition and fees at a community college are currently around $3,300 a year, according to the Washington Post. Is getting rid of that last few thousand dollars really what is keeping parents from taking advantage of this financial bargain?

More