Even Karl Marx Opposed 'Free' College

Comedian Bill Maher has pointed out on HBO that 50 percent of student debt is held by people who went to graduate school.

Image Credit: pxfuel

Few things get progressives more excited than “free” stuff: free health care, free housing, free college.

Evidence for this could be found in The New York Times on May 19, when an article that was published under the headline “Should College Be Free?” pointed out that surging tuition costs are making college less affordable to Americans.

“In the past three decades, the average cost of attending a private college in the United States has tripled — landing at around $50,000 per year,” NY Times writer Callie Holtermann explains.

College is indeed expensive these days—the result of a virtually endless supply of federal loans that have allowed universities to quadruple the price of tuition since the early 1960s (in real dollars). And the enormous price tag is probably why a majority of Americans support making it “free,” a policy that 85 percent of Democrats and 36 percent of Republicans say they support.

Though President Joe Biden’s proposal to make community college “free” was scrapped from his $3.5 trillion spending package, some states are forging ahead.

New Mexico, flush on cash from tax revenues thanks to surging oil prices, is leading the way. Last year, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a bill that offers free tuition to all high school graduates (regardless of income) to enroll at public colleges and universities in the state.

Other states are creating less ambitious programs. Lawmakers in Michigan passed a law to offer free college to residents who were deemed “essential workers” during the pandemic, and to extend free community college to individuals 25 and older. The University of Texas System, meanwhile, recently expanded tuition assistance with a $300 million endowment.

While lawmakers around the United States continue to try to make “free” college a reality, it’s worth noting that perhaps the most famous collectivist in history was opposed to the idea: Karl Marx.