Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will unveil a $350 billion taxpayer-funded plan to make college “debt-free” on Monday and her Republican rivals have wasted no time condemning it as an outdated and irresponsible proposal.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who recently called for a “holistic overhaul” of higher education and is the only GOP presidential candidate to deliver a wide-ranging list of conservative solutions, described Clinton’s plan as a typical progressive approach.
“This is the thing they always do on the Left,” Rubio said Monday on Fox News. “[Clinton] has to figure out who to raise taxes on — so this is about making doing business in America even more expensive — raising taxes, and then taking all that money and pouring it into an outdated higher education system.”
While delivering a speech in early July, Rubio described higher education as a “cartel of existing colleges and universities” and criticized the solutions offered by his Democratic rivals. The junior senator reiterated his concerns during the appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
“We should be giving people degrees on the basis of what they know, not how many hours they sat in a classroom,” he said, adding that positioning “online coursework [and] competency-based education” as a competitive alternative to the conventional model of higher education would benefit both.
“Traditional colleges, every time you add more money in financial aid, they raise their tuition rates,” Rubio said. “That’s what they do, and that’s what’s going to happen here again unless they have competition.”
According to the Associated Press, Clinton’s proposal would tie federal funding for four-year public universities and two-year community colleges to state-guaranteed “no loan” tuition — the goal being to force states to increase their investments in higher education so tuition costs are minimized to a point where students aren’t having to take out loans to attend college. Clinton’s plan would also cap itemized tax deductions on high-income Americans at 28 percent to raise funds capable of subsidizing federal funding of higher education.
Another GOP candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said the former secretary of state’s plan would “double-down on the failed Obama economic policies that have led to a ‘new normal’ of sluggish economic growth, rising college costs spurred by Washington, and limited opportunities for all Americans — including recent college graduates.”
“We don’t need more top-down Washington solutions that will raise the cost of college even further and shift the burden to hardworking taxpayers,” Bush said in a statement to the press. “We need to change the incentives for colleges with fresh policies that result in more individualization and choices, drive down overall costs, and improve the value of a college degree, which will help lead to real, sustained four-percent economic growth.”
In comparison to Clinton’s proposal, Rubio’s plan to fix the burgeoning student debt crisis includes increasing the manageability of student loans and equipping students with the skills they need to succeed in a workforce that is continuously incorporating new technologies.
The Florida Republican has previously said he wants to amend the country’s antiquated model of higher education by exposing colleges and universities to the same market forces that other industries endure. If elected president, Rubio says he would pursue the creation of a contemporary accreditation process to open the door to lower-cost education providers and make them more accessible to prospective college students.
Under the current system, students are limited to earning undergraduate degrees at accredited institutions and can only receive credit toward their degrees in a select group of open online courses. Rubio hopes to make include trade schools, online programs, and other small-scale colleges eligible for accreditation by the Department of Education.
The revised accreditation process would accompany additional reforms aimed at empowering students, including Rubio’s bipartisan “Student Right to Know Before You Go Act.”
Rubio introduced the aforementioned legislation in early May along with Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Warner of Virginia. The act calls for the creation of an online platform where college-bound students can access information about overall costs, graduation rates, and potential earnings that colleges and universities would be required to provide. Rubio has described it as a way for students to determine “how much they can expect to earn with a given degree before they take out the loans to pay for it.”
Clinton’s Democratic opponent Bernie Sanders has advocated a plan that goes beyond debt-free college by eliminating tuition at four-year institutions altogether through increased taxation of Wall Street. The Vermont senator’s plan would also reduce and cap student loan interest rates.
Rubio has categorized both proposals as “narrow and shortsighted” and says rebuilding the broken U.S. model of higher education will require any candidate to do far more than make “timid tweaks to the old system.”
