ObamaCares about education

Last Thursday, President Barack Obama announced an ambitious initiative to expand access to community college for those students willing to work for it. Modeled off a similar measure in Tennessee, the program could fund 9 million eligible students to attend two-year community college programs, saving them around $3,800 per year, according to the administration’s estimates. In a time when student debt has spiraled out of control—the average student now graduates with approximately $29,000 in debt—making community colleges more affordable will increase access to higher education. Though there are concerns about the implementation and underlying intent of the president’s proposed program, it is symbolically in line with people’s right to continue their education.

As it stands in its early stages, the initiative raises concerns regarding its implementation. On the one hand, the well-intentioned plan to provide free tuition to students may not, in fact, resolve the problem of financial accessibility given the community college cost structure. Unlike four-year colleges, tuition is only a small fraction—21 percent—of the cost of attending a community college, according to a recent College Board poll. Furthermore, the program—which stipulates that students must maintain a grade point average of 2.5 or higher to qualify—may exacerbate the extant problem of grade inflation. And already-crowded classrooms may become even more beleaguered given the potential influx of applicants.

Despite these challenges of implementation, however, the program’s effect of providing more people the opportunity to continue their education is commendable. Yet, this broadened access raises a deeper question: What is the underlying objective of a higher education degree? Should the American public be educated to become members of the workforce with maximum economic productivity in mind? Or is the pursuit of knowledge itself an end, even if its benefits are not as immediate as a paycheck?

In recent years, a college degree has become a pre-requisite for many of the jobs in the modern American economy, as it has shifted away from production and manufacturing and toward service and technology. We often justify public investment in higher education as a means of increasing worker productivity, thereby improving access to skilled jobs and bolstering the economy on the whole. But balancing the demands of the job market with the ideals of higher education is a difficult task. While vocational training is often associated with guaranteed careers and professional security, it does not always deliver some of the “intangibles”—studies in philosophy and ethics, for example—offered by a liberal arts education. An educated workforce has been the bedrock of American economic growth before, and there is no reason to believe that investing in education will not benefit greater society in the future.

Although a step in the right direction, President Obama’s plan solves only a small part of public education’s larger, thornier problems. Expanding access to higher education must be partnered with revitalizing K-12 programs, which have been shown to be a more efficient investment in lowering the achievement gap. Furthermore, providing access to higher education is only beneficial to those who graduate high school and are prepared to pursue a degree. Nonetheless, regardless of what the program becomes, we principally support President Obama’s actions both as a tool for social mobility and as a symbolic gesture toward providing equal access to the pursuit of education.