With all of the political debates and town hall meetings, there have been a lot of political issues discussed in the lead up to this year's presidential election.
One that is certainly gaining some interest, particularly among younger voters, is the idea of a free college education for every student who wants one. Bernie Sanders has been touting this a lot but he isn't the first politician to pose the idea.
Naturally, there is opposition to the plan. After all, who wants a nation full of smarty pants college grads *does keg stand* whooo!
Actually, much of the opposition has been centered around paying for the program. Bernie is fond of the tried and true "tax the rich" concept. The rich, for some reason, are not super fond of this idea, nor are many of the poor, who idolize the super-rich for reasons they themselves don't fully understand.
Maybe, some might suggest, we get some of that tasty off-shore cash we hear so much about. Heck, even Donald Trump has acknowledged the billions in tax dollars currently being sheltered by our ridiculous tax policy.
But what about a third option? One neither Trump nor Sanders is talking about but is entirely plausible. The college themselves could pay for the plan. On their own. Without help from students or taxpayers.
Certainly colleges won't be super keen to this concept. Never mind the fact that taxpayers have underwritten the whole of higher education for decades through federally secured loans while our economy has grown to one in increasing need of advanced education in a variety of different fields. Point remains, they won't want to do it. Sure, but they could.
And that would be the real resistence to the idea. Colleges and universities across the country wouldn't want the nation to know they could because they simply don't want anyone to know exactly how much money they have access to without public funding or tuition to help.
Every college, or at least every college I'm aware of, maintains an endowment, which is basically a large savings account made up of donations from alumni, businesses and other sources. Many of these accounts are modest but several are quite large. The Harvard endowment, for instance, is in the billions – and that doesn't mean 2 or 3 billion, that means closer to 40 billion.
Many of the largest college endowments belong to private schools. It makes sense, really. Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton have alumni made up of a who's who of the rich and powerful. Ivy League types often have more cash to donate than, say, Heald grads.
But public colleges also have quite large endowments.
Texas A&M, for instance, could use something like 10-15% of its endowment and provide more than $20,000 in tuition to more than 45,000 students.
I'm not an endowment expert, but it seems like a school could repair 10% of its endowment in perputity and never carve into the larger body of the account ever. Further, graduates would certainly be much more inclined to donate if they graduated debt-free.
Further-further, debt is crushing our country and student debt is a major component of that. What would it do to the economy if millions of college grads spent $3-400 a month on consumer goods and services rather than loan repayments?
OK, so what if a political type could encourage public schools to undertake this plan. What about private schools? What would convince them? Competition.
What kid is going to pay to go to Stanford, USC or Duke when there is a suitable substitute a few miles away they can attend for free? And what will those private schools do with no students? Change their names to Duke Pile of Empty Worthless Buildings? Of course they'd follow suit lest they become obsolete and pointless.
And all it takes is one domino to fall. And all that might take is to know that your tax dollars are paying for universities and, for many larger schools, they don't need to.
So go ahead. Flick the first domino and watch the rest of them tumble into place.
