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Should Higher Education Be Free?

• Vijay Govindarajan
• Jatin Desai

Disruptive new models offer an alternative to expensive tuition.

In the United States, our higher education system is broken. Since 1980, we’ve seen a 400% increase in the cost of higher education, after adjustment for inflation — a higher cost escalation than any other industry, even health care. We have recently passed the trillion dollar mark in student loan debt in the United States.

• Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, and faculty partner at the Silicon Valley incubator Mach 49. He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His latest book is Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future . His Harvard Business Review articles “ Engineering Reverse Innovations ” and “ Stop the Innovation Wars ” won McKinsey Awards for best article published in HBR. His HBR articles “ How GE Is Disrupting Itself ” and “ The CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention ” are HBR all-time top-50 bestsellers. Follow him on LinkedIn . vgovindarajan
• JD Jatin Desai is co-founder and chief executive officer of The Desai Group and the author of  Innovation Engine: Driving Execution for Breakthrough Results .

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Should College Be Free?

New Mexico unveiled a plan to make its public colleges and universities free. Should all states follow?

By The Learning Network

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Do you plan to attend college?

How much will cost factor into your consideration and choice of school?

The average cost of tuition and fees at an in-state public college is over $10,000 per year — an increase of more than 200 percent since 1988 , when the average was $3,190; at a private college the cost in now over $36,000 per year; and at over 120 ranked private colleges the sticker price exceeds $50,000 per year.

Additionally, over 44 million Americans collectively hold more than $1.5 trillion in student debt , and last year’s college graduates borrowed an average of $29,200 for their bachelor’s degree.

On Sept 18, New Mexico announced a plan to make tuition at all state colleges free for students regardless of family income.

Should all states follow suit? Or is it an unrealistic plan at the expense of taxpayers?

In “ New Mexico Announces Plan for Free College for State Residents, ” Simon Romero and Dana Goldstein write:

In one of the boldest state-led efforts to expand access to higher education, New Mexico is unveiling a plan on Wednesday to make tuition at its public colleges and universities free for all state residents, regardless of family income. The move comes as many American families grapple with the rising cost of higher education and as discussions about free public college gain momentum in state legislatures and on the presidential debate stage. Nearly half of the states, including New York, Oregon and Tennessee, have guaranteed free two- or four-year public college to some students. But the New Mexico proposal goes further, promising four years of tuition even to students whose families can afford to pay the sticker price. The program, which is expected to be formally announced by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday and still requires legislative approval, would apply to all 29 of the state’s two- and four-year public institutions. Long one of the poorest states in the country, New Mexico plans to use climbing revenues from oil production to pay for much of the costs. Some education experts, presidential candidates and policymakers consider universal free college to be a squandering of scarce public dollars, which might be better spent offering more support to the neediest students. But others say college costs have become too overwhelming and hail the many drives toward free tuition. “I think we’re at a watershed moment,” said Caitlin Zaloom, a cultural anthropologist at New York University who has researched the impact of college costs on families. “It used to be that a high school degree could allow a young adult to enter into the middle class. We are no longer in that situation. We don’t ask people to pay for fifth grade and we also should not ask people to pay for sophomore year.”

The article continues:

Officials contend that New Mexico would benefit most from a universal approach to tuition assistance. The state’s median household income is $46,744, compared with a national median of $60,336. Most college students in the state also come from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds; almost 65 percent of New Mexico undergraduates are among the nation’s neediest students, according to the state’s higher education department. The new program in New Mexico would be open to recent graduates of high schools or high school equivalency programs in the state, and students must maintain a 2.5 grade point average. In contrast to other states, like Georgia, that have curbed access to public colleges by unauthorized immigrants, New Mexico would open the tuition program to all residents, regardless of immigration status.

It concludes:

In some ways, the burst of interest in free public college is a return to the nation’s educational past. As recently as the 1970s, some public university systems remained largely tuition-free. As a bigger and more diverse group of undergraduates entered college in recent decades, costs rose, and policymakers began to promote the idea of a degree as less of a public benefit than a private asset akin to a mortgage, according to Professor Zaloom, of N.Y.U. Many states raised tuition, and students became more reliant on grants and loans. “We should be looking at the examples from our own history,” Professor Zaloom said. Free college educations from the University of California, the City University of New York and other public systems, she added, have been “some of the most successful engines of mobility in this country.”

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Should college be free? Do you believe that students have a right to higher education in the same way they now have a right to elementary and secondary education?

If yes, would you place any restrictions on it, such as requiring that students maintain a 2.5 grade point average?

If not, how would you address the problem of unequal access to college and the debt that often comes with a degree?

Some critics to the plan respond that universal free college would be “a squandering of scarce public dollars” that should be spent on the “neediest students.” Do you think their concerns are justified?

Governor Lujan Grisham says, “This program is an absolute game changer for New Mexico. In the long run, we’ll see improved economic growth, improved outcomes for New Mexican workers and families and parents.” Do you agree? What are possible downsides to the plan? And is it realistic?

How concerned are you about the price of college? Do you worry about graduating with a large debt burden? How do you plan to pay for college?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Winter 2024

Why Free College Is Necessary

Higher education can’t solve inequality, but the debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to education discourse.

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Free college is not a new idea, but, with higher education costs (and student loan debt) dominating public perception, it’s one that appeals to more and more people—including me. The national debate about free, public higher education is long overdue. But let’s get a few things out of the way.

College is the domain of the relatively privileged, and will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future, even if tuition is eliminated. As of 2012, over half of the U.S. population has “some college” or postsecondary education. That category includes everything from an auto-mechanics class at a for-profit college to a business degree from Harvard. Even with such a broadly conceived category, we are still talking about just half of all Americans.

Why aren’t more people going to college? One obvious answer would be cost, especially the cost of tuition. But the problem isn’t just that college is expensive. It is also that going to college is complicated. It takes cultural and social, not just economic, capital. It means navigating advanced courses, standardized tests, forms. It means figuring out implicit rules—rules that can change.

Eliminating tuition would probably do very little to untangle the sailor’s knot of inequalities that make it hard for most Americans to go to college. It would not address the cultural and social barriers imposed by unequal K–12 schooling, which puts a select few students on the college pathway at the expense of millions of others. Neither would it address the changing social milieu of higher education, in which the majority are now non-traditional students. (“Non-traditional” students are classified in different ways depending on who is doing the defining, but the best way to understand the category is in contrast to our assumptions of a traditional college student—young, unfettered, and continuing to college straight from high school.) How and why they go to college can depend as much on things like whether a college is within driving distance or provides one-on-one admissions counseling as it does on the price.

Given all of these factors, free college would likely benefit only an outlying group of students who are currently shut out of higher education because of cost—students with the ability and/or some cultural capital but without wealth. In other words, any conversation about college is a pretty elite one even if the word “free” is right there in the descriptor.

The discussion about free college, outside of the Democratic primary race, has also largely been limited to community colleges, with some exceptions by state. Because I am primarily interested in education as an affirmative justice mechanism, I would like all minority-serving and historically black colleges (HBCUs)—almost all of which qualify as four-year degree institutions—to be included. HBCUs disproportionately serve students facing the intersecting effects of wealth inequality, systematic K–12 disparities, and discrimination. For those reasons, any effort to use higher education as a vehicle for greater equality must include support for HBCUs, allowing them to offer accessible degrees with less (or no) debt.

The Obama administration’s free community college plan, expanded in July to include grants that would reduce tuition at HBCUs, is a step in the right direction. Yet this is only the beginning of an educational justice agenda. An educational justice policy must include institutions of higher education but cannot only include institutions of higher education. Educational justice says that schools can and do reproduce inequalities as much as they ameliorate them. Educational justice says one hundred new Universities of Phoenix is not the same as access to high-quality instruction for the maximum number of willing students. And educational justice says that jobs programs that hire for ability over “fit” must be linked to millions of new credentials, no matter what form they take or how much they cost to obtain. Without that, some free college plans could reinforce prestige divisions between different types of schools, leaving the most vulnerable students no better off in the economy than they were before.

Free college plans are also limited by the reality that not everyone wants to go to college. Some people want to work and do not want to go to college forever and ever—for good reason. While the “opportunity costs” of spending four to six years earning a degree instead of working used to be balanced out by the promise of a “good job” after college, that rationale no longer holds, especially for poor students. Free-ninety-nine will not change that.

I am clear about all of that . . . and yet I don’t care. I do not care if free college won’t solve inequality. As an isolated policy, I know that it won’t. I don’t care that it will likely only benefit the high achievers among the statistically unprivileged—those with above-average test scores, know-how, or financial means compared to their cohort. Despite these problems, today’s debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to higher education discourse—a concept that fifty years of individuation, efficiency fetishes, and a rightward drift in politics have nearly pummeled out of higher education altogether. We no longer have a way to talk about public education as a collective good because even we defenders have adopted the language of competition. President Obama justified his free community college plan on the grounds that “Every American . . . should be able to earn the skills and education necessary to compete and win in the twenty-first century economy.” Meanwhile, for-profit boosters claim that their institutions allow “greater access” to college for the public. But access to what kind of education? Those of us who believe in viable, affordable higher ed need a different kind of language. You cannot organize for what you cannot name.

Already, the debate about if college should be free has forced us all to consider what higher education is for. We’re dusting off old words like class and race and labor. We are even casting about for new words like “precariat” and “generation debt.” The Debt Collective is a prime example of this. The group of hundreds of students and graduates of (mostly) for-profit colleges are doing the hard work of forming a class-based identity around debt as opposed to work or income. The broader cultural conversation about student debt, to which free college plans are a response, sets the stage for that kind of work. The good of those conversations outweighs for me the limited democratization potential of free college.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a contributing editor at Dissent . Her book Lower Ed: How For-Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality is forthcoming from the New Press.

This article is part of   Dissent’s special issue of “Arguments on the Left.” Click to read contending arguments from Matt Bruenig and Mike Konczal .

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College & Careers

Tuition-free college is critical to our economy

Morley Winograd and Max Lubin

November 2, 2020, 13 comments.

To rebuild America’s economy in a way that offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, federal support for free college tuition should be a priority in any economic recovery plan in 2021.

Research shows that the private and public economic benefit of free community college tuition would outweigh the cost. That’s why half of the states in the country already have some form of free college tuition.

The Democratic Party 2020 platform calls for making two years of community college tuition free for all students with a federal/state partnership similar to the Obama administration’s 2015 plan .

It envisions a program as universal and free as K-12 education is today, with all the sustainable benefits such programs (including Social Security and Medicare) enjoy. It also calls for making four years of public college tuition free, again in partnership with states, for students from families making less than $125,000 per year.

The Republican Party didn’t adopt a platform for the 2020 election, deferring to President Trump’s policies, which among other things, stand in opposition to free college. Congressional Republicans, unlike many of their state counterparts, also have not supported free college tuition in the past.

However, it should be noted that the very first state free college tuition program was initiated in 2015 by former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican. Subsequently, such deep red states with Republican majorities in their state legislature such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas have adopted similar programs.

Establishing free college tuition benefits for more Americans would be the 21st-century equivalent of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration initiative.

That program not only created immediate work for the unemployed, but also offered skills training for nearly 8 million unskilled workers in the 1930s. Just as we did in the 20th century, by laying the foundation for our current system of universal free high school education and rewarding our World War II veterans with free college tuition to help ease their way back into the workforce, the 21st century system of higher education we build must include the opportunity to attend college tuition-free.

California already has taken big steps to make its community college system, the largest in the nation, tuition free by fully funding its California Promise grant program. But community college is not yet free to all students. Tuition costs — just more than $1,500 for a full course load — are waived for low-income students. Colleges don’t have to spend the Promise funds to cover tuition costs for other students so, at many colleges, students still have to pay tuition.

At the state’s four-year universities, about 60% of students at the California State University and the same share of in-state undergraduates at the 10-campus University of California, attend tuition-free as well, as a result of Cal grants , federal Pell grants and other forms of financial aid.

But making the CSU and UC systems tuition-free for even more students will require funding on a scale that only the federal government is capable of supporting, even if the benefit is only available to students from families that makes less than $125,000 a year.

It is estimated that even without this family income limitation, eliminating tuition for four years at all public colleges and universities for all students would cost taxpayers $79 billion a year, according to U.S. Department of Education data . Consider, however, that the federal government  spent $91 billion  in 2016 on policies that subsidized college attendance. At least some of that could be used to help make public higher education institutions tuition-free in partnership with the states.

Free college tuition programs have proved effective in helping mitigate the system’s current inequities by increasing college enrollment, lowering dependence on student loan debt and improving completion rates , especially among students of color and lower-income students who are often the first in their family to attend college.

In the first year of the TN Promise , community college enrollment in Tennessee increased by 24.7%, causing 4,000 more students to enroll. The percentage of Black students in that state’s community college population increased from 14% to 19% and the proportion of Hispanic students increased from 4% to 5%.

Students who attend community college tuition-free also graduate at higher rates. Tennessee’s first Promise student cohort had a 52.6% success rate compared to only a 38.9% success rate for their non-Promise peers. After two years of free college tuition, Rhode Island’s college-promise program saw its community college graduation rate triple and the graduation rate among students of color increase ninefold.

The impact on student debt is more obvious. Tennessee, for instance, saw its applications for student loans decrease by 17% in the first year of its program, with loan amounts decreasing by 12%. At the same time, Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications soared, with 40% of the entire nation’s increase in applications originating in that state in the first year of their Promise program.

Wage inequality by education, already dreadful before the pandemic, is getting worse. In May, the unemployment rate among workers without a high school diploma was nearly triple the rate of workers with a bachelor’s degree. No matter what Congress does to provide support to those affected by the pandemic and the ensuing recession, employment prospects for far too many people in our workforce will remain bleak after the pandemic recedes. Today, the fastest growing sectors of the economy are in health care, computers and information technology. To have a real shot at a job in those sectors, workers need a college credential of some form such as an industry-recognized skills certificate or an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.

The surest way to make the proven benefits of higher education available to everyone is to make college tuition-free for low and middle-income students at public colleges, and the federal government should help make that happen.

Morley Winograd is president of the Campaign for Free College Tuition . Max Lubin is CEO of Rise , a student-led nonprofit organization advocating for free college.  

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. Commentaries published on EdSource represent diverse viewpoints about California’s public education systems. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our  guidelines  and  contact us .

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Genia Curtsinger 2 years ago 2 years ago

Making community college free to those who meet the admission requirements would help many people. First of all, it would make it easy for students and families, for instance; you go to college and have to pay thousands of dollars to get a college education, but if community college is free it would help so you could be saving money and get a college education for free, with no cost at all. It would make … Read More

Making community college free to those who meet the admission requirements would help many people. First of all, it would make it easy for students and families, for instance; you go to college and have to pay thousands of dollars to get a college education, but if community college is free it would help so you could be saving money and get a college education for free, with no cost at all. It would make it more affordable to the student and their families.

Therefore I think people should have free education for those who meet the admission requirements.

nothing 2 years ago 2 years ago

I feel like colleges shouldn’t be completely free, but a lot more affordable for people so everyone can have a chance to have a good college education.

Jaden Wendover 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think all colleges should be free, because why would you pay to learn?

Samantha Cole 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think college should be free because there are a lot of people that want to go to college but they can’t pay for it so they don’t go and end up in jail or working as a waitress or in a convenience store. I know I want to go to college but I can’t because my family doesn’t make enough money to send me to college but my family makes too much for financial aid.

Nick Gurrs 2 years ago 2 years ago

I feel like this subject has a lot of answers, For me personally, I believe tuition and college, in general, should be free because it will help students get out of debt and not have debt, and because it will help people who are struggling in life to get a job and make a living off a job.

NO 2 years ago 2 years ago

I think college tuition should be free. A lot of adults want to go to college and finish their education but can’t partly because they can’t afford to. Some teens need to work at a young age just so they can save money for college which I feel they shouldn’t have to. If people don’t want to go to college then they just can work and go on with their lives.

Not saying my name 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think college tuition should be free because people drop out because they can’t pay the tuition to get into college and then they can’t graduate and live a good life and they won’t get a job because it says they dropped out of school. So it would be harder to get a job and if the tuition wasn’t a thing, people would live an awesome life because of this.

Brisa 3 years ago 3 years ago

I’m not understanding. Are we not agreeing that college should be free, or are we?

m 2 years ago 2 years ago

it shouldnt

Trevor Everhart 3 years ago 3 years ago

What do you mean by there is no such thing as free tuition?

Olga Snichernacs 3 years ago 3 years ago

Nice! I enjoyed reading.

Anonymous Cat 3 years ago 3 years ago

Tuition-Free: Free tuition, or sometimes tuition free is a phrase you have heard probably a good number of times. … Therefore, free tuition to put it simply is the opportunity provide to students by select universities around the world to received a degree from their institution without paying any sum of money for the teaching.

Mister B 3 years ago 3 years ago

There is no such thing as tuition free.

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Right Now | Subsidy Shuffle

Could College Be Free?

January-February 2020

Illustration by Adam Niklewicz

Email David Deming 

Visit David Deming's website.

Hear David Deming discuss free college on HKS PolicyCast

etting ahead— or getting by—is increasingly difficult in the United States without a college degree. The demand for college education is at an all-time high, but so is the price tag. David Deming—professor of public policy at the Kennedy School and professor of education and economics at the Graduate School of Education—wants to ease that tension by reallocating government spending on higher education to make public colleges tuition-free. 

Deming’s argument is elegant. Public spending on higher education is unique among social services: it is an investment that pays for itself many times over in higher tax revenue generated by future college graduates, a rare example of an economic “free lunch.” In 2016 (the most recent year for which data are available), the United States spent $91 billion subsidizing access to higher education. According to Deming, that spending isn’t as progressive or effective as it could be. The National Center for Education Statistics indicates that it would cost roughly $79 billion a year to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. So, Deming asks, why not redistribute current funds to make public colleges tuition-free, instead of subsidizing higher education in other, roundabout ways? 

Of the estimated $91 billion the nation spends annually on higher education, $37 billion go to tax credits and tax benefits. These tax programs ease the burden of paying for both public and private colleges, but disproportionately benefit middle-class children who are probably going to college anyway. Instead of lowering costs for those students, Deming points out, a progressive public-education assistance program should probably redirect funds to incentivize students to go to college who wouldn’t otherwise consider it. 

Another $13 billion in federal spending subsidize interest payments on student loans for currently enrolled undergraduates. And the remaining $41 billion go to programs that benefit low-income students and military veterans, including $28.4 billion for Pell Grants and similar programs. Pell Grants are demand-side subsidies: they provide cash directly to those who pay for a service, i.e., students; supply-side subsidies (see below) channel funds to suppliers, such as colleges. Deming asserts that Pell Grant money, which travels with students, voucher-style, is increasingly gobbled up by low-quality, for-profit colleges. These colleges are often better at marketing their services than at graduating students or improving their graduates’ prospects, despite being highly subsidized by taxpayers . “The rise of for-profit colleges has, in some ways, been caused by disinvestment in public higher education. Our public university systems were built for a time when 20 percent of young people attended college,” says Deming. “Now it’s more like 60 percent, and we haven’t responded by devoting more resources to ensuring that young people can afford college and succeed when they get there.” As a result, an expensive, for-profit market has filled the educational shortage that government divestment has caused.

The vast majority of states have continuously divested in public education in recent decades, pushing a higher percentage of the cost burden of schools onto students. Deming believes this state-level divestment is the main reason for the precipitous rise in college tuition, which has outpaced the rest of the Consumer Price Index for 30 consecutive years. (Compounding reasons include rising salaries despite a lack of gains in productivity—a feature of many human-service-focused industries such as education and healthcare.) Against this backdrop, Deming writes, “at least some—and perhaps all—of the cost of universal tuition-free public higher education could be defrayed by redeploying money that the government is already spending.” (The need for some funding programs would remain, however, given the cost of room, board, books, and other college supplies.) 

Redirecting current funding to provide tuition-free public-school degrees is only one part of Deming’s proposal. He knows that making public higher education free could hurt the quality of instruction by inciting a race to the bottom, stretching teacher-student ratios and pinching other academic resources. He therefore argues that any tuition-free plan would need to be paired with increased state and federal investment, and programs focused on getting more students to graduate. Because rates of degree completion strongly correlate with per-student spending, Deming proposes introducing a federal matching grant for the first $5,000 of net per-student spending in states that implement free college. “Luckily,” he says, “spending more money is a policy lever we know how to pull.” 

Deming argues that shifting public funding to supply-side subsidies, channeled directly to public institutions, could nudge states to reinvest in public higher education. Such reinvestment would dampen the demand for low-quality, for-profit schools; increase college attendance in low-income communities; and improve the quality of services that public colleges and universities could offer. Early evidence of these positive effects has surfaced in some of the areas that are piloting free college-tuition programs, including the state of Tennessee and the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. 

Higher education is an odd market because buyers (students) often don’t have good information about school quality and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime decision. Creating a supply-side subsidy system would take some freedom of choice away from prospective undergraduates who want government funding for private, four-year degrees. But, for Deming, that’s a trade-off worth making, if the state is better able to measure the effectiveness of certain colleges and allocate subsidies accordingly. Education is more than the mere acquisition of facts—which anyone can access freely online—because minds, like markets, learn best through feedback. Quality feedback is difficult to scale well without hiring more teachers and ramping up student-support resources. That’s why Deming thinks it’s high time for the public higher-education market to get a serious injection of cash.

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Should College Be Free? The Pros and Cons

Should college be free? Understand the debate from both sides

Types of Publicly Funded College Tuition Programs

Pros: why college should be free, cons: why college should not be free, what the free college debate means for students, how to cut your college costs now, frequently asked questions (faqs).

damircudic / Getty Images

Americans have been debating the wisdom of free college for decades, and more than 20 states now offer some type of free college program. But it wasn't until 2021 that a nationwide free college program came close to becoming reality, re-energizing a longstanding debate over whether or not free college is a good idea. 

And despite a setback for the free-college advocates, the idea is still in play. The Biden administration's proposal for free community college was scrapped from the American Families Plan in October as the spending bill was being negotiated with Congress.

But close observers say that similar proposals promoting free community college have drawn solid bipartisan support in the past. "Community colleges are one of the relatively few areas where there's support from both Republicans and Democrats," said Tulane economics professor Douglas N. Harris, who has previously consulted with the Biden administration on free college, in an interview with The Balance. 

To get a sense of the various arguments for and against free college, as well as the potential impacts on U.S. students and taxpayers, The Balance combed through studies investigating the design and implementation of publicly funded free tuition programs and spoke with several higher education policy experts. Here's what we learned about the current debate over free college in the U.S.—and more about how you can cut your college costs or even get free tuition through existing programs.

Key Takeaways

• Research shows that free tuition programs encourage more students to attend college and increase graduation rates, which creates a better-educated workforce and higher-earning consumers who can help boost the economy. 
• Some programs are criticized for not paying students’ non-tuition expenses, for not benefiting students who need assistance most, or for steering students toward community college instead of four-year programs.  
• If you want to find out about free programs in your area, the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education has a searchable database. You’ll find the link further down in this article. 

Before diving into the weeds of the free college debate, it's important to note that not all free college programs are alike. Most publicly funded tuition assistance programs are restricted to the first two years of study, typically at community colleges. Free college programs also vary widely in the ways they’re designed, funded, and structured:

• Last-dollar tuition-free programs : These programs cover any remaining tuition after a student has used up other financial aid , such as Pell Grants. Most state-run free college programs fall into this category. However, these programs don’t typically help with room and board or other expenses.
• First-dollar tuition-free programs : These programs pay for students' tuition upfront, although they’re much rarer than last-dollar programs. Any remaining financial aid that a student receives can then be applied to other expenses, such as books and fees. The California College Promise Grant is a first-dollar program because it waives enrollment fees for eligible students.
• Debt-free programs : These programs pay for all of a student's college expenses , including room and board, guaranteeing that they can graduate debt-free. But they’re also much less common, likely due to their expense.  

Proponents often argue that publicly funded college tuition programs eventually pay for themselves, in part by giving students the tools they need to find better jobs and earn higher incomes than they would with a high school education. The anticipated economic impact, they suggest, should help ease concerns about the costs of public financing education. Here’s a closer look at the arguments for free college programs.

A More Educated Workforce Benefits the Economy

Morley Winograd, President of the Campaign for Free College Tuition, points to the economic and tax benefits that result from the higher wages of college grads. "For government, it means more revenue," said Winograd in an interview with The Balance—the more a person earns, the more they will likely pay in taxes . In addition, "the country's economy gets better because the more skilled the workforce this country has, the better [it’s] able to compete globally." Similarly, local economies benefit from a more highly educated, better-paid workforce because higher earners have more to spend. "That's how the economy grows," Winograd explained, “by increasing disposable income."

According to Harris, the return on a government’s investment in free college can be substantial. "The additional finding of our analysis was that these things seem to consistently pass a cost-benefit analysis," he said. "The benefits seem to be at least double the cost in the long run when we look at the increased college attainment and the earnings that go along with that, relative to the cost and the additional funding and resources that go into them." 

Free College Programs Encourage More Students to Attend

Convincing students from underprivileged backgrounds to take a chance on college can be a challenge, particularly when students are worried about overextending themselves financially. But free college programs tend to have more success in persuading students to consider going, said Winograd, in part because they address students' fears that they can't afford higher education . "People who wouldn't otherwise think that they could go to college, or who think the reason they can't is because it's too expensive, [will] stop, pay attention, listen, decide it's an opportunity they want to take advantage of and enroll," he said.

According to Harris, students also appear to like the certainty and simplicity of the free college message. "They didn't want to have to worry that next year they were not going to have enough money to pay their tuition bill," he said. "They don't know what their finances are going to look like a few months down the road, let alone next year, and it takes a while to get a degree. So that matters." 

Free college programs can also help send "a clear and tangible message" to students and their families that a college education is attainable for them, said Michelle Dimino, an Education Senior Policy Advisor with Third Way. This kind of messaging is especially important to first-generation and low-income students, she said. 

Free College Increases Graduation Rates and Financial Security

Free tuition programs appear to improve students’ chances of completing college. For example, Harris noted that his research found a meaningful link between free college tuition and higher graduation rates. "What we found is that it did increase college graduation at the two-year college level, so more students graduated than otherwise would have." 

Free college tuition programs also give people a better shot at living a richer, more comfortable life, say advocates. "It's almost an economic necessity to have some college education," noted Winograd. Similar to the way a high school diploma was viewed as crucial in the 20th century, employees are now learning that they need at least two years of college to compete in a global, information-driven economy. "Free community college is a way of making that happen quickly, effectively and essentially," he explained. 

Free community college isn’t a universally popular idea. While many critics point to the potential costs of funding such programs, others identify issues with the effectiveness and fairness of current attempts to cover students’ college tuition. Here’s a closer look at the concerns about free college programs.

It Would Be Too Expensive

The idea of free community college has come under particular fire from critics who worry about the cost of social spending. Since community colleges aren't nearly as expensive as four-year colleges—often costing thousands of dollars a year—critics argue that individuals can often cover their costs using other forms of financial aid . But, they point out, community college costs would quickly add up when paid for in bulk through a free college program: Biden’s proposed free college plan would have cost $49.6 billion in its first year, according to an analysis from Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Some opponents argue that the funds could be put to better use in other ways, particularly by helping students complete their degrees.

Free College Isn't Really Free

One of the most consistent concerns that people have voiced about free college programs is that they don’t go far enough. Even if a program offers free tuition, students will need to find a way to pay for other college-related expenses , such as books, room and board, transportation, high-speed internet, and, potentially, child care. "Messaging is such a key part of this," said Dimino. Students "may apply or enroll in college, understanding it's going to be free, but then face other unexpected charges along the way." 

It's important for policymakers to consider these factors when designing future free college programs. Otherwise, Dimino and other observers fear that students could potentially wind up worse off if they enroll and invest in attending college and then are forced to drop out due to financial pressures. 

Free College Programs Don’t Help the Students Who Need Them Most

Critics point out that many free college programs are limited by a variety of quirks and restrictions, which can unintentionally shut out deserving students or reward wealthier ones. Most state-funded free college programs are last-dollar programs, which don’t kick in until students have applied financial aid to their tuition. That means these programs offer less support to low-income students who qualify for need-based aid—and more support for higher-income students who don’t.

Community College May Not Be the Best Path for All Students

Some critics also worry that all students will be encouraged to attend community college when some would have been better off at a four-year institution. Four-year colleges tend to have more resources than community colleges and so can offer more support to high-need students. 

In addition, some research has shown that students at community colleges are less likely to be academically successful than students at four-year colleges, said Dimino. "Statistically, the data show that there are poorer outcomes for students at community colleges […] such as lower graduation rates and sometimes low transfer rates from two- to four-year schools." 

With Congress focused on other priorities, a nationwide free college program is unlikely to happen anytime soon. However, some states and municipalities offer free tuition programs, so students may be able to access some form of free college, depending on where they live. A good resource is the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education’s searchable database of Promise Programs , which lists more than 120 free community college programs, though the majority are limited to California residents.

In the meantime, school leaders and policymakers may shift their focus to other access and equity interventions for low-income students. For example, higher education experts Eileen Strempel and Stephen Handel published a book in 2021 titled "Beyond Free College: Making Higher Education Work for 21st Century Students." The book argues in part that policymakers should focus more strongly on college completion, not just college access. "There hasn't been enough laser-focus on how we actually get people to complete their degrees," noted Strempel in an interview with The Balance. 

Rather than just improving access for low-income college students, Strempel and Handel argue that decision-makers should instead look more closely at the social and economic issues that affect students , such as food and housing insecurity, child care, transportation, and personal technology. For example, "If you don't have a computer, you don't have access to your education anymore," said Strempel. "It's like today's pencil."

Saving money on college costs can be challenging, but you can take steps to reduce your cost of living. For example, if you're interested in a college but haven't yet enrolled, pay close attention to where it's located and how much residents typically pay for major expenses, such as housing, utilities, and food. If the college is located in a high-cost area, it could be tough to justify the living expenses you'll incur. Similarly, if you plan to commute, take the time to check gas or public transportation prices and calculate how much you'll likely have to spend per month to go to and from campus several times a week. 

Now that more colleges offer classes online, it may also be worth looking at lower-cost programs in areas that are farther from where you live, particularly if they allow you to graduate without setting foot on campus. Also check out state and federal financial aid programs that can help you slim down your expenses, or, in some cases, pay for them completely. Finally, look into need-based and merit-based grants and scholarships that can help you cover even more of your expenses. Also consider applying to no-loan colleges , which promise to help students graduate without going into debt.

Should community college be free?

It’s a big question with varying viewpoints. Supporters of free community college cite the economic contributions of a more educated workforce and the individual benefit of financial security, while critics caution against the potential expense and the inefficiency of last-dollar free college programs. 

What states offer free college?

More than 20 states offer some type of tuition-free college program, including Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington State. The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education lists 115 last-dollar community college programs and 16 first-dollar community college programs, though the majority are limited to California residents.

Is there a free college?

There is no such thing as a truly free college education. But some colleges offer free tuition programs for students, and more than 20 states offer some type of tuition-free college program. In addition, students may also want to check out employer-based programs. A number of big employers now offer to pay for their employees' college tuition . Finally, some students may qualify for enough financial aid or scholarships to cover most of their college costs.

The White House. “ Build Back Better Framework ,” see “Bringing Down Costs, Reducing Inflationary Pressures, and Strengthening the Middle Class.”

The White House. “ Fact Sheet: How the Build Back Better Plan Will Create a Better Future for Young Americans ,” see “Education and Workforce Opportunities.”

Coast Community College District. “ California College Promise Grant .”

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “ The Dollars and Cents of Free College ,” see “Biden’s Free College Plan Would Pay for Itself Within 10 Years.”

Third Way. “ Why Free College Could Increase Inequality .”

Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “ The Dollars and Cents of Free College ,” see “Free-College Programs Have Different Effects on Race and Class Equity.”

University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. “ College Promise Programs: A Comprehensive Catalog of College Promise Programs in the United States .”

What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

• Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
• It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
• It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
• For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

• Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
• Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
• Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
• Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
• Professional training opportunities
• Equal quality of education through minimum standards
• Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
• Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
• Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

• About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
• 8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school  Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

  How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

• Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
• Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
• Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
• Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
• Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
• Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

  How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

• UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
• Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
• Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
• Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
• Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

• International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
• Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
• Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

  What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

• Providing free and compulsory education to all
• 155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
• Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

• Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school. 

• Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

• Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

• Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

• Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

Related items

• Right to education

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Quality Education pp 328–337 Cite as

Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation

• Michael M. Kretzer 6  
• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2020

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Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

Free Education is defined as the abolishment of school fees. In general, two types of fees exist. Firstly, direct fees or costs such as tuition fees or textbook fees and so on, which means they are spent directly on education. Secondly, indirect fees or costs, which are not directly used for educational purposes, but are a necessity, such as travel expenses to school. There is, however, no consensus about a definition of Free Education or Free Primary Education (FPE), as the predominantly used terminology are used equivalent (Inoue and Oketch 2008 : 44). Free Education is mainly seen as FPE and includes the abolishment of tuition or textbook fees (UNESCO 2002 ). Hence, Free Education is limited most of the time to primary schools and the abolishment of direct fees, but it does not mean a totally free and cost-free education for parents. Research has shown that the best is to lower the direct and the indirect costs for education, as this increases the chances of children being...

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Kretzer, M.M. (2020). Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P.G., Wall, T. (eds) Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95870-5_93

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According to international human rights law, primary education shall be compulsory and free of charge. Secondary and higher education shall be made progressively free of charge.

Free primary education is fundamental in guaranteeing everyone has access to education. However, in many developing countries, families often cannot afford to send their children to school, leaving millions of children of school-age deprived of education. Despite international obligations, some states keep on imposing fees to access primary education. In addition, there are often indirect costs associated with education, such as for school books, uniform or travel, that prevent children from low-income families accessing school.

Financial difficulties states may face cannot relieve them of their obligation to guarantee free primary education. If a state is unable to secure compulsory primary education, free of charge, when it ratifies the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), it still has the immediate obligation, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for its progressive implementation, within a reasonable numbers of years, to be fixed in the plan (ICESCR, Article 14). For more information, see General Comment 11  (1999) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

'Progressive introduction of free education' means that while states must prioritise the provision of free primary education, they also have an obligation to take concrete steps towards achieving free secondary and higher education ( General Comment 13 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999: Para. 14).

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948, Article 26)
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966, Articles 13 and 14)
• Convention on the Rights of the Child  (1982, Article 28)
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women  (1979, Article 10)
• Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006, Article 24)
• UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education  (1960, Articles 4)
• ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999, Preamble, Articles 7 and 8)
• African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990, Article 11)
• African Youth Charter (2006, Articles 13 and 16)
• Charter of the Organisation of American States (1967, Article 49)
• Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights, Protocol of San Salvador (1988, Article 13)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union  (2000, Article 14)
• European Social Charter  (revised) (1996, Articles 10 and 17)
• Arab Charter on Human Rights  (2004, Article 41)
• ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (2012, Article 31)

For more details, see International Instruments - Free and Compulsory Education

The following case-law on free education includes decisions of national, regional and international courts as well as decisions from national administrative bodies, national human rights institutions and international human rights bodies.

Claim of unconstitutionality against article 183 of the General Education Law (Colombia Constitutional Court; 2010)

Other issues.

Getting Into College , Is UoPeople Worth it , Paying for School , Tuition Free , Why UoPeople

5 Reasons Why College Should Be Free: The Case for Debt-Free Education

Updated: December 7, 2023

Published: January 30, 2020

The cost of college is rising even faster than inflation in the U.S. Many students around the world face financial constraints when it comes to attending college. Because education is such a vital part of life, there are many reasons why college should be free .

Not only do the arguments for debt-free education include personal benefits, but they also show how education helps to positively impact society overall.

Thankfully, the progression in technology is making it possible to increase access to education globally.

However, there is still a long way to go and more schools and countries are weighing the pros and cons of offering an affordable education . The ability to provide free education for all is becoming more of a possibility as time progresses.

Photo by  Good Free Photos  on  Unsplash

5 reasons why college should be free.

Here are 5 reasons that support the case for debt-free education:

1. Improves Society

When people are more educated, they can solve problems better. This means that society can progress at a faster rate. Additionally, people with education can better understand the history of their society and its current economic conditions. As such, they may be more inclined to participate in politics and improve their country. Also, when more people have access to a college education, the number of employable people for high-skilled jobs increases. This means that more people will join the workforce, which could help lessen the wealth gap between the upper, middle, and lower classes.

2. Widened Workforce

Along with technological progressions comes a shift in the workforce. Most automated jobs are replacing low-skill workers. Automation is spreading quickly across positions that require repetition, like back-office tasks. However, automation is not meant to replace the entire workforce. Instead, the needs of most economies are shifting to require a more skilled workforce, with people who have good analytical skills and creative thinking abilities. These skills are both taught and honed with a college education. If more people could attend college for free , then the workforce will expand. The workforce will also be more agile. In the case of an economic downturn when one industry falters, another generally rises to replace it. Then, workers need to be retrained and taught skills for the job. If more people could enter school and gear their studies towards booming industries, then the population will be more equipped to cope with economic changes.

3. A Boosted Economy

Most students graduate with a massive amount of debt. For example, in the U.S., the average student debt per person is $31,172. When students graduate with debt, they will likely continue to add to their debt with interest. As such, it can take many years before they manage to dig themselves out of debt that only seems to keep growing. In the meantime, this delays spending on such things as buying a house or a car. On the other hand, if people were to graduate without debt, that could fast track their ability to earn, save, and spend. This helps to stimulate the economy. With increases in consumer spending, there is more demand. More demand in spending also relates back to higher demand in the workforce or more opportunities for employment. This spurs a positive cycle of economic activity. Furthermore, the fear of being in debt can cause students to avoid school entirely. But, if the debt wasn’t a reality, then the younger generation may feel more motivated to go to school in the first place.

4. Increase Equality

Since affordability is a major issue for so many people when it comes to attending college, the playing field has not always been equal. A lot of the brightest minds in the world stem from low-income households, but that shouldn’t hold them back from continuing their education. If there was an equal opportunity to attend school, then everyone would have the chance to go to school. Affordable education is a major step towards equality.

5. More Focus

When students are not worried about money, they can focus better on their studies. Even when students have loans and financial aid, they may find themselves stuck worrying about how they will have to pay them back in the future. This added stress can negatively impact their focus during the time when they are supposed to be learning.

Photo by  Christian Wiediger  on  Unsplash

Countries that offer free college.

Many countries understand how debt-free education provides positive outcomes. Therefore, they made tuition-free universities a reality.

Here’s a look at some countries where education is free for everyone, free for just their residents or highly subsidized by the government for foreign exchange students:

• Austria (free for EU residents, low cost for non-EU residents)
• Czech Republic
• Spain (free for EU residents, low cost for non-EU residents)

The Advantages of Online University

With technological advances, online universities are proliferating. Online universities require less overhead costs. Therefore, they are almost always cheaper than traditional schools. However, there are even some that are totally tuition-free.

Founded in 2009, Shai Reshef started the University of the People with the mission to offer an affordable and quality education to anyone around the world. Students from over 200 countries and territories have been in attendance of the online programs.

We have degree programs in Computer Science, Health Science, Education, and Business Administration.

Thanks to a wide network of volunteers and professors from renowned institutions around the world, the education offered parallels that of a traditional American university and is accredited as such.

The Takeaway

The money for tuition-free or cheaper universities will have to come from somewhere. Arguments against free education include the fact that taxes may increase, either individual or on businesses. Otherwise, the money will have to be allocated from elsewhere, like potentially decreasing military spending.

Despite the political considerations, there are ways to make tuition-free education possible or, at least, more widespread. As illustrated, there are many advantages to offering affordable college education to everyone around the world. At University of the People, that’s exactly what we are all about!

Related Articles

Higher Education Doesn’t Have to be a Battlefield

To curb the campus culture wars, reformers should focus on transforming the design of universities, not eliminating ideologies.

In 1973, historian Russell Weigley described the American way of war as a “ strategy of annihilation .” Such a strategy aims to identify a single, clear objective, a decisive battle or series of battles where victory will force the enemy to surrender. Gens. Grant and Sherman demonstrated this approach during the Civil War, and America’s victories in World War II established a deep reservoir of conviction in both the military and the public to support the strategy of annihilation. 

Many Americans today—in the aftermath of the war on terror and as a result of unforeseen blowback —are less taken with strategies of annihilation as the way to wage war than they were half a century ago. Unfortunately, lessons learned painfully on the battlefield have not kept strategies of annihilation from seeping into American politics and culture. Over and again we see binary framings that allow for no outcome other than a decisive victory by one side or the other. 

The debate about the crisis in higher education provides the latest example, where the pursuit of an illusory ideological victory undermines urgently needed efforts to redesign universities and colleges as centers of learning. 

This crisis has been building for a long time. Concerns about the cost of higher education have grown steadily more pronounced over the past several decades, with the proportion of Americans who feel college is affordable dropping by almost half, from 39 percent to 22 percent between 1985 and 2011. In 2017, Republicans’ views toward higher education shifted noticeably, with a majority saying for the first time that they felt colleges and universities had a negative influence on society. While Republicans were more likely to cite concerns about the politicization of campus culture—reflected in the sharp decline in the number of faculty who identify as conservative , for example—versus affordability, the net effect is that by 2023, confidence in higher education had collapsed . 

Hamas’ terror attacks against Israel on October 7, and in particular the failure of many university leaders to adequately respond to the surge in antisemitism that followed, brought an acute degree of urgency to the situation. For many Americans, including those who had been less engaged on the issue, it appeared as though an illiberal campus culture that seemed to justify, and in some cases celebrate , the brutal killing of innocents was on full display.

While rightly critiquing rigid orthodoxies on many campuses and the indefensible nature of some of the views expressed there following October 7, too many calls for reforming higher education have adopted a strategy of annihilation in how they frame the situation. This was evident, for example, in investor Bill Ackman’s argument for how to fix Harvard , which rests primarily on eliminating DEI—described by Ackman as “a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard but the educational system at large”—as the core objective.

Such strategies were gaining traction before October 7. They featured prominently with Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E Act , for example, which the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argued against out of concern that it would effectively “ trade one orthodoxy for another .” But it is now increasingly common to see calls for wholesale changes in personnel , based upon their perceived ideology, as a precondition for improving higher education. 

The problem with this framing is that strategies of annihilation will almost certainly fail to improve our universities. To be successful, such strategies require there to be clear-cut sides, which do not exist in higher education despite attempts to say otherwise. Most Americans primarily think about college in instrumental rather than ideological terms. Most people do not want universities to be “woke” or “anti-woke”—they just want them to carry out a set of functions, especially to help students secure work and embark on successful careers . 

Furthermore, while research shows a strong liberal bias among students, professors, and administrators, views are far from monolithic. Even on hot-button issues, most people’s views are more fluid and uncertain than rigidly fixed. But strategies of annihilation make it easy to see adversaries everywhere. This causes reformers to overreach, alienate potential partners, and drive further tumult and extremity on campuses . 

Finally, strategies of annihilation in higher education are self-defeating. The worldview of a student or faculty member should not be the top concern in a free society. Individuals can hold a wide range of views, even ones the broader society disagrees with. As the Cato Institute’s Andrew Gillen points out , attempting to eliminate any ideological movement would undermine the very goal of promoting a more open and robust learning environment.  

In short, there can be no decisive political battle won in our campus culture wars. But there is clearly a fraught environment on many campuses. What strategy should reformers pursue? 

One solution starts by changing the analogy from war to organizational design. The path forward for higher education does not involve defeating enemies, but rather reinvigorating a focus on what we might call a university’s core capabilities , to borrow a term from management scholars. With this framing, the salient question is not “what do people believe” but rather, “what is the job to be done .” A core capabilities framework prioritizes the services, experiences, and products that colleges need to deliver to their students, parents, faculty, and other relevant audiences. This emphasis shifts the conversation from an individual’s psychology and political views to how universities are governed and managed. 

An organizational design approach offers a more promising path to invigorating higher education, in part because it better diagnoses the situation. Although it’s common in an era of hyper-polarization to view different settings—the business world, campuses, churches—as simply containers for a massive culture war , each setting is in fact distinct. With higher education, a large part of today’s crisis has to do with what we might call “capability creep”, where institutions lose sight of their most important capabilities, especially those related to delivering learning that is relevant, accessible, and affordable, and instead emphasize other capabilities, such as those related to advocacy. 

Consider the growth in centers and institutes across universities . The University of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Innovations Initiative, for example, lists 34 different centers or institutes connected to addressing environmental challenges. This reflects a common situation in higher education, where an array of centers—housed within but existing slightly independent from the institution itself—focus on addressing a contemporary policy or social issue. Any one such center might not exert much influence on the institution, but as they grow in stature or increase in number, they can change the institution’s strategic calculus, causing it to emphasize advocacy over learning. 

A strategy of annihilation seeks to cut such efforts off because of their perceived politicized nature. Not only would such a wide-sweeping change likely cause a backlash, it could also undermine work that many on campus might view as a core capability—for example, partnering with industry for mutually beneficial research. 

A strategy of organizational design would instead start with a series of questions to identify how such centers or institutions serve or subtract from core capabilities. These questions include: What core capabilities are the centers explicitly tied to? Who makes decisions about the centers’ activities? How transparent is the decision-making process and how reflective of the university’s stakeholders is the decision-making team? This approach enables higher education leaders to identify and support the structures and strategies that best deliver on the most important capabilities and to reform or eliminate those that do not.  

A similar example could be applied to endowments and investments. Over the past decade, approximately 3 percent of U.S. higher education institutions, representing 39 percent of endowment assets, have divested from fossil fuel companies . When viewed as a problem of ideology, it sets the stage not just for rollbacks, but counter-divestment efforts . Such efforts, while holding opposite goals, are similar in that they create governing structures that permit the use of the endowment for ideological goals. 

An organizational design approach would instead assess the situation through the lens of core capabilities and decision-making processes. Rather than imposing any ideological litmus test, higher education leaders would consider what jobs the university needs the endowment to do, the governance structures best suited to execute those jobs, and the impact different options would have on the broader institution. This is the kind of approach that led then-Harvard President Drew Faust to caution against fossil fuel divestment in 2013 : “Conceiving of the endowment not as an economic resource, but as a tool to inject the University into the political process or as a lever to exert economic pressure for social purposes, can entail serious risks to the independence of the academic enterprise.”  

This framing applies to conflicts over free speech and expression on campus as well. Adopting clear principles in support of free speech, pluralism, and robust debate, such as those associated with the Chicago Statement , could be a sensible step for many institutions. But for any set of principles to be effective, they have to be embedded into decision-making systems that apply holistically across the institution. It’s not just a matter of resolving what kinds of speakers the institution allows, but also addressing who gets to make these decisions, how the institution resolves conflicting demands, and how it applies such principles more broadly across campus activities. 

The need to consider university activities holistically underscores another virtue of strategies of organizational design, namely their simplicity. At their most basic level, such strategies involve a straightforward set of steps: identify core capabilities; shape decision-making and management structures to best execute those capabilities; ensure transparency and accountability; and assess, iterate, and improve. At a moment when trust in higher education is so low and tensions so high, reformers must fight efforts to add complexity and stick to a process that can be clearly communicated to all.    

Being simple does not mean any of this will be easy, however. There are always trade-offs and conflicts to resolve. Different groups demand different capabilities from higher education. Faculty and industry partners might hold contrasting expectations about how much an institution prioritizes preparing students for careers versus preparing them for the responsibilities of citizenship, for example. Considering the diverse array of interests universities have to account for, from students and parents to faculty and donors, the process of organizing around core capabilities will never be neat and tidy. And it will play out differently for each institution based on its unique context. 

But while acknowledging these risk factors, a strategy of organizational design provides any institution with a clear pathway forward that is more actionable and less freighted with ideology than strategies of annihilation. Strategies of annihilation pushed for today might generate headlines, but they will fail to transform higher education. 

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Comments (26)

At the risk of sounding glib, what exactly are the campus, "culture wars?" Who is at war with whom? As a parent of a year 1 university student, I read several books on both financial aid and admissions to the lead up of trying to give my kid an idea what is possible for university. At no time in the lead up to this were failing universities or culture wars an important factor in deciding on a university. I am not feigning ignorance about The Save Palestine ethos that has taken hold on many college campuses, nor the uptick in antisemitism around the USA in general. Rather, it just seems to me that articles like this are somewhat straw mannish: A big discussion about issues parents and their college age students don't care about. The parents and students in my FB Group are mostly focused on return on investment, scholarship money, student loans, the benefits/drawbacks to certain programs of study, and all kinds of minutiae. These culture wars never come up. If parents/students think a school is too much into social justice, they don't go there. What am I missing?

"In short, there can be no decisive political battle won in our campus culture wars." Tell that all the fascist professors in American higher ed. Oh wait, you can't because they've been 100% obliterated. Annihilated you might even say. Fascism is a monstrous evil. Yet we have allowed it's equally vile sister, Marxism (though the caffeine free, diet maoists are better described as wannabe pseudo marxists) to obtain a near total death grip on academia. Your foolish little piece sounds like a great plan for building a university from the ground up, and I'm sympathetic to not viewing these things in annihilationist terms, but this is written in such an ignorant manner I'm wondering how you can have your head up your posterior so far as to not see that academia is so saturated to the molecular level with marxist flavored horse manure that any effort to rebuild HAS to deal with this fact, and your proposal does not. In any way, shape or form. Foolishness.

You're absolutely right. All those computer science professors teaching Marxism. All those physics professors teaching Marxism. All those microbiology professors teaching Marxism. All those engineering professors teaching Marxism. All those geology professors teaching Marxism. Why, it's Marxism all the way down isn't it?

Here is a quote from an ACTUAL job opening for an engineering professor at Harvard: "Required application documents include cover letter curriculum vitae teaching/advising statement that describes the candidate’s philosophy and practices related to undergraduate teaching and advising statement of professional activities or research statement (optional) summary of related teaching experience or representative publications statement describing efforts to encourage diversity, inclusion, and belonging, including past, current, and anticipated future contributions in these areas" I guess that last item just doesn't mean anything at all, really. It's not actually a requirement that you tell them how good you are at indoctrinating the one, true faith.

Yes, because encouraging diversity, inclusion, and belonging is such a terrible, terrible thing in a classroom. Why, you might actually make a woman in an traditionally male field of study feel welcomed and at home. That would be awful, wouldn't it? Listen--I think DEI statements are silly and probably a passing fad. But after that engineering professor is hired, I guarantee you that he will be teaching engineering, not Marxism. And if he doesn't do what my father's engineering professor at Stanford did--which was to tell a class full of men and a few women that women simply didn't have the intellectual chops to be engineers--I think that's all to the good.

Oh, you're one of them. Whoops, sorry for mistaking you for a well meaning person. I'll file you away over in the genocidal monster bucket where you belong.

Hahahaha! In the annals of hysterical overreaction, you gotta win some kind of prize.

Sure, sure. Meanwhile in Med School the DEI evangelists are making the med students chant "Free Palestine!"

Snark all you want, you obviously haven't been to many lectures about making physics professors sign DEI manifestos.

And to follow up, I failed to read the author's mini-bio. And I see that he is "founding member" of some jargon drivel organization spewing meaningless drive. Should have done that then this drivel would be expected. Academia is ALREADY nearly 100% polarized, you twit. Deal with that first, or any other effort is pointless and stupid.

Something needs to annihilate the annihilators on the illiberal left who are engaged in a project to wipe out all dissent from their views in our universities. That has to happen before any reforms can take place.

An atheist student or faculty member would not — ideally, should not — feel very welcome at an Evangelical college, if they even got a foot in the door. They might retain attorneys from FIRE to deploy free speech as the universal solvent to dissolve the ethos of homogenous associations, but the proper recourse would be to find a more compatible institution. This is not an exact analogy to the “problems” in higher ed., because atheists don’t clammer to join Evangelical colleges the way conservatives seek spots in the Ivy League. But the lesson ought to be the same. Free association is a healthy liberal value. Society doesn’t need every institution to follow the Chicago model. Respectable scholars still today might believe in order to understand and consider free inquiry and deliberation to be a means to commitment, loyalty, mission, inspiration, and personal development, etc. These pious folks contribute to learning as they serve their ideological purpose. Some conservatives suggest that Woke, too, is a religion. If so, why not defend religious freedom? People in the Ivy League also deserve a purpose in life, beyond publishing research (and course materials for Evangelical colleges). Dispatch podcasts, for example, are often thoughtful and productive even without the “ideological diversity” of a liberal guest. People of like mind don’t need their unique institutions to become cultural battlegrounds in order to practice the art of understanding and deliberation. Three cheers for the liberal value of free association.

Is it really free association if one side isn't allowed to speak freely and must hide their convictions just to get in?

I agree that universities should show a touch of institutional realism and stop indulging the century old fantasy that they exist to create an enlightened societal elite. Which was even less appetizing than their older, falsely modest but very self-serving claim merely to service a pre-existing upper class. They can no more cultivate post adolescents in a vacuum than even the best intentioned parents can single handedly socialize their own children. It may not take a village, but the village will be heard whether anyone else likes it or not. Exactly where that leaves the higher educational mission, I personally have no idea, but sometimes the proverbial drawing board is the best place to start.

Good stuff here. Similar to Yuval Levin's critique in _A Time to Build_, a book about people not willing to be formed by institutions but rather trying to use those institutions as their platform. Chapter 5 is about colleges and universities, and it points out that on pretty much every campus there are at least three factions among faculty members: 1) the hard-core liberal arts folks (higher education is to make students better people), 2) the job preparation folks (higher education is to enable students to get a job), and 3) the activists (higher education is to prepare students to change the world). Getting everyone to agree on one goal--or core capability as this article words it--is extremely difficult. In general, faculty members allow others to go their own way as long as they can teach what they want and the way they want. That's mainly what happens at the small private college where I teach. This article brings in the challenges of university centers and endowment investments, though I'm not sure they're a huge part of the problem. Many of the most egregious occurrences on campus have to do with the student life end of things and the many staff and administrators involved.

--Many Americans today—in the aftermath of the war on terror and as a result of unforeseen blowback—are less taken with strategies of annihilation as the way to wage war than they were half a century ago.-- Agreed, and that's the mistake. The "strategy of annihilations" is the proper course of action and it's historical success is what it is.

My husband has been a law professor for 40 years. He has always made a point of teaching in a way that covers the subject fairly without political bias. His students tend to be unable to say what his political leanings are. He regards that as his job. There has been too much political bleed in all areas from sports to retail to college. Most people don’t want politics inserted into every aspect of life. We’d like people to just do their job and stay in their lane.

There are institutions doing this, and have been for at least 75 years. They are sometimes described as having 'ability-based curricula.' You might be able to test your predictions about their effects by comparing those schools with standard ones that have a similar student body. That assumes, however, that 'standard' schools do not have clearly defined outcomes. I don't work at one, so I don't know. You might also be able to test it by comparing departments that have to prepare their students for standardized licensure tests with departments that don't. Again, that assumes that the departments without licensure tests don't, in fact, have defined program outcomes. At any rate, this is an idea that could possibly be tested -- or the attempt to do so could reveal the extent to which universities already do what you suggest.

More From Forbes

How to overcome the pandemic k-12 learning loss.

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Children on a walk to school

K-12 education recovery plans from the pandemic need a reboot based on transparency, evidence, and accountability for results.

Covid-19 pandemic learning loss continues to haunt America's K-12 education system. It casts a long shadow over the future of countless young people, creating a similar effect on the education system as long Covid has on health care. In a September 2023 gathering with reporters, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona called current recovery efforts "appalling and unacceptable," The 74 Million reported. "It's like as a country we've normalized those gaps," he added.

In a recent Hoover Institution report, Stanford economist Eric Hanushek calculates that a consequence of learning loss is a 6% reduction in the average lifetime earnings of today’s students. Beyond economic impacts, this calamity threatens to reverse progress. A 2022 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper noted how improved test scores were associated with more income, improved educational attainment, and declines in teen motherhood, incarceration and arrest rates. The most vulnerable young people stand to lose the most.

There is some good news , though. The 2024 Education Recovery Scorecard , a collaboration between Harvard and Stanford, reports students in 30 states have recouped approximately one-third of the three-year pandemic math loss and one-quarter of the reading loss. Yet disparities persist, and the achievement gap between affluent and disadvantaged students, as well as among racial groups, continues to widen.

Community recovery plans should have three elements. Transparency, evidence, and accountability for results are core principles guiding all community recovery plans and here are suggestions to help you create a community plan organized by these features.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, 1. be honest about learning loss.

K-12 leaders must candidly acknowledge the reality of the learning loss puzzle, convince the community that it exists, and unite the community its members around a plan and strategy to solve the puzzle. The learning loss puzzle begins with the drop in student academic achievement manifested in declining test scores during the pandemic. This decrease is documented across many analyses, leading Mark Schneider, director of the U.S. Institute for Education Sciences, to write in November 2022, "Different test. Same story."

Complicating academic learning loss are five nonacademic factors:

• a disconnect between parental perceptions of how students are doing academically and the reality of learning loss;
• declining mental health among students;
• unprecedented chronic levels of student ( and teacher ) absenteeism;
• weakened social ties in communities ; and
• fiscal challenges facing school districts post-pandemic.

2. Develop A Community Plan Based On Evidence

There is no one version of a community recovery plan. But it can be built on the successes your community and others have achieved. Include specific strategies and milestones that describe actions to solve the learning loss puzzle. Here are four essential elements for every plan, with examples of successful programs and additional resources.

Reengage Students And Families With Schools

Some reconnection activities are simple, like sending texts to parents about their child's absences. Others involve home visits or even cash payments to meet attendance requirements. Attendance Works , a nonprofit focused on reducing chronic absenteeism in schools, has documented and organized many student and family re-engagement solutions into three tiers of intervention , from least to most intensive.

Promote Quality Instruction

High-quality instructional materials and connected teacher professional development for teachers are vital to solving the learning loss puzzle. For example, the Council of Chief State School Officers leads a 13-state post-pandemic project to elevate teaching and learning through evidence-based curricula. Another example is the federally supported LEARN Network , which assists states and communities that want to adopt evidence-based materials and teacher support in literacy and math. Both of these organizations provide suggestions for additional resources and implementation roadmaps .

Provide Academic Support To Students

This support element includes different approaches to tutoring ; competency-based instruction where students advance based on what they know rather than age; summer school ; effective use of student time on task; and linking tutor vendor payments with student outcomes like attendance, and academic learning can improve learning and accountability for results. High-dosage tutoring is an especially effective strategy for achieving significant academic improvements. The National Student Support Accelerator , a program at Stanford , is a recognized source of information for this work.

Create More Education Options

The pandemic produced an exodus from public schools of around 1.3 million students during the 2020-21 school year, according to an Education Week analysis. Many families enrolled their children in new learning environments like micro-schools , learning pods , and homeschooling . Other parents chose new school options for their children, including public charter and private and parochial schools. State policymakers responded to this demand for more options by expanding public and private school-choice options . “School choice is a rare win-win policy, one that’s generally good for families taking advance of greater options, while also helping to improve traditional public schools, as well,” concludes a Fordham Institute analysis . All this underscores the need for more personalized student learning environments that should be part of a community's recovery plan.

3. A Report Card That Tracks Progress

Each community needs its own version of a scorecard, using different measures to track progress based on the program strategies it has developed. For example, the Education Recovery Scorecard tracks efforts across 8,000 school districts in 30 states to measure reading and math test scores. That data helps the scorecard evaluate whether these districts are making progress in overcoming learning loss.

Quantifying the answers to these and other questions holds schools, local leaders, educators, students, parents and other stakeholders accountable for results.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona's words should guide every community's recovery plan: "There must be equal parts support and accountability to get the best for our children," he said in a January EdWeek report .

Disclosure: The following organizations mentioned in this article receive financial support from the Walton Family Foundation: Council of Chief State School Officers, National Student Support Accelerator, Education Week, and Fordham Institute. In my role with the Foundation, I have no current direct involvement with or financial interest in these grantees.

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April 3, 2024

New Law Allowing Religion into Science Classrooms Is Dangerous for Everyone

It is imperative that we protect science education from “intelligent design” and other alternative “theories”

By Amanda L. Townley

Win McNamee/Getty Images

I grew up a creationist in the rural southeastern U.S. I am now a scientist, educator, wife, mother and person of faith. Regardless of whether you practice religion, you should fight to prohibit the teaching of nonscientific alternative ideas in science classrooms and use your vote and your voice to prevent the inclusion of religious beliefs in public education. A recently signed law in West Virginia illustrates why.

I often hear lamentations about the removal of God from public schools. These sentiments are based on a misinterpretation of the principle of the separation of church and state. In the U.S., religious beliefs and practices are protected and situated in their rightful place within people’s homes and communities so that individuals can choose what to teach their children regarding religion. Kids can still pray whenever they wish, gather with their peers, create faith-based groups or even nondisruptively practice their faith in school. Separating state and church means young people cannot be compelled to engage in religious actions by someone in a position of power, such as a teacher, administrator or lawmaker. Separation of church and state is as critical to people of faith as it is to those who do not practice faith traditions. The protection of personal religious freedoms was a vital component of the foundation of our nation.

On March 22 West Virginia governor Jim Justice signed a bill that purports to protect the ability of the state’s public school educators to teach scientific theories. There is no actual problem that the new law would solve, however; none of its supporters produced a teacher who plausibly claimed to have been oppressed. But the legislative history of the bill, known as Senate Bill 280, makes it clear that its real aim is to encourage educators to teach religiously motivated “alternatives” to evolution. As introduced, SB 280 would have expressly allowed the teaching of “ intelligent design ” in West Virginia’s public schools.

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The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), of which I am the executive director, monitors attempts to undermine the accurate and robust teaching of science education in K–12 public school classrooms. Most often, these attempts die in committee or fail to pass in state legislatures to become a law. This particular West Virginia bill appeared in a prior session and passed the state’s Senate in February 2023 before dying in the House Education Committee. This session, the Senate Education Committee adjusted the wording to remove the term “intelligent design” in favor of “scientific theories,” conspicuously failing to explain what that term does and does not include. During the floor discussion of Senate Bill 280, however, its sponsor, Amy Grady (Republican, District 4), declared that even as amended, the bill would protect the teaching of “intelligent design” in West Virginia’s public schools.

It’s been 19 years since a federal court in neighboring Pennsylvania took up the issue of whether “intelligent design,” like its predecessor “creation science,” can be constitutionally taught in public schools. Presiding over the case Kitzmiller v. Dover , Judge John E. Jones III, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, found that it cannot be. There was no appeal of his meticulous decision, and no court has ruled otherwise.

The policy makers in West Virginia would have done well to consult the decision in Kitzmiller . They would have learned about the legal perils awaiting any teacher or district unwise enough to invoke the protection of the newly enacted law in defense of teaching “intelligent design”; in Pennsylvania, the Dover Area School Board ended up paying more than $1 million of the plaintiffs’ legal fees. They might also have realized that their motivations rested on some common misconceptions.

The first misconception is that learning about evolution threatens students’ faith. Evolutionary biology, like any area of modern science, is simply a body of knowledge about the natural world and a set of methods and procedures for attaining, refining and testing that knowledge. Nothing in evolutionary biology denies the existence of God or places constraints on divine activity. Evolutionary biologists include people of many faiths and of none, and evolutionary biology is routinely taught in institutions of higher education, whether public or private, secular or sectarian, as the well-established area of modern science that it is.

A second misconception is that exposing students to “intelligent design” promotes religious freedom. (The proponents of “intelligent design” often claim their views have no religious motivation, but frame it otherwise when it suits their purposes.) On the contrary, because “intelligent design” reflects a narrow sectarian rejection of evolution, teaching it in school actually harms religious freedom.

The division of church and state is crucial for the religious freedom of everyone in the U.S. Yet some people hope for the undoing of this separation of religion and political power, mainly because they expect that those in power will share their particular religious beliefs. They should stop and think very carefully about the possible consequences of temporarily having their way.

In particular, with Senate Bill 280 now on the books, West Virginia educators are free to teach whatever “scientific theories” they please. With no definition of "scientific theories" in the law, a few misguided educators may present creationism—either old-fashioned “creation science” or newfangled and equally unscientific “intelligent design”—as a result. But the sky’s the limit. Why not geocentrism or flat-Earthery? Why not crystal healing? Why not racist views claiming that white people and Black people have separate ancestry? All of these notions, which stem from religious beliefs, not science, have been held up by their proponents as scientific theories, and West Virginia’s legislature and governor just opened the public classroom door to them.

West Virginia is only one state, but others—Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee—have similar laws on the books. As the nation continues to polarize along religious and political lines, more states may follow, compromising both science education and religious freedom.

For these reasons, people of all faiths and none should unite in fighting for religious freedom, including by ensuring that religiously motivated but unscientific “alternatives” to science are not allowed in public school classrooms. Failure to maintain the separation of church and state, and to instead favor a particular sectarian view, opens a door that, one day, people will wish could be closed.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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Some state lawmakers want school chaplains as part of a ‘rescue mission’ for public education

Eric Johnson, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines, Iowa-area hospitals, sits for a portrait on March 11, 2024. He has served as a chaplain in hospitals for 15 years. Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S., but some conservatives are hoping to introduce the role in public schools. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)

Eric Johnson, center, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines, Iowa-area hospitals, talks with other chaplains serving under his direction, on March 11, 2024. Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S., but some conservatives are hoping to introduce the role in public schools. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have proposed legislation to allow spiritual chaplains in public schools, a move that proponents say will ease a youth mental health crisis , bolster staff retention and offer spiritual care to students who can’t afford or access religious schools.

Conservatives also argue religious foundations will act as a “rescue mission” for what they say are public schools’ declining values, a topic that has galvanized Republican-controlled Legislatures to fight for issues such as parental oversight of curriculum, restrictions on books and instruction on gender identity and state-funded tuition assistance for private and religious schools.

But many chaplains and interfaith organizations oppose the chaplaincy campaign, calling the motivation offensive and describing the dangers of introducing a position of authority to children without clear standards or boundaries.

“They are going to be engaging students, sometimes when they’re at their most vulnerable, and there’s not going to be any checks on whether they’re able to proselytize, what they’re able to say to kids grappling with really difficult issues,” said Maureen O’Leary, organizing director at Interfaith Alliance.

The organization has shared concerns with lawmakers and school boards, saying schools should be “neutral spaces where students can come as their full selves,” O’Leary said.

“This isn’t a matter of being pro- religion and anti-religion,” she said. “This is a matter of the appropriate role of religion as it applies to public schools.”

Texas kicks off a national campaign

Texas became the first state to allow school chaplains under a law passed in 2023.

The National School Chaplain Association, which identifies itself as a Christian chaplain ministry, says on its website it was “instrumental” in spearheading the Texas law. The organization is a subsidiary of Mission Generation, which was established in 1999 to bring Jesus to classrooms worldwide. In a December 2023 newsletter, NSCA celebrated Texas for starting a “national movement placing God back in public education.”

NSCA chaplains “deliver holistic care, guidance, and safety to all people, all the time regardless of their personal beliefs, or non-beliefs” and the organization’s statement of faith is typical of endorsing bodies, an association representative said in an email.

After the bill passed, dozens of Texas chaplains representing different faiths and denominations collectively wrote to school boards, warning the law doesn’t require that “chaplains refrain from proselytizing while at schools or that they serve students from different religious backgrounds.”

The law ordered more than 1,200 school districts to decide by March 1 whether they would allow chaplains as employees or volunteers. Many of the largest opted out.

Houston and Austin said volunteers’ roles and responsibilities were unchanged so a volunteer wouldn’t be providing chaplain services. Dallas’ school board said chaplains should not be employees or volunteers at this time.

In the meantime, varying school chaplain bills have been introduced in many Southern and Midwestern states, with mixed success.

A school chaplain bill passed both chambers of the Florida Legislature and awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signature. School policy must describe the services of a volunteer chaplain and require parental consent.

Indiana’s proposal, which passed one chamber but failed in the other, specified chaplains would provide secular services unless student and parents consent to nonsecular services. Some lawmakers questioned where that line would be drawn and how a student would know.

In Utah, Rep. Keven Stratton told his colleagues recent Supreme Court decisions on religious freedom provide an opportunity for school chaplains and a return to the tradition of acknowledging God in public institutions.

John Johnson, his counterpart in the Utah Senate, where the proposal ultimately failed without full GOP support, said he observed an “outright disdain for religious principles within our schools” during committee meetings. He said that would have consequences such as more families choosing alternatives to public school.

“It would be helpful and much easier if my colleagues would take our efforts here not as an attack but as a rescue mission,” he said on the Senate floor.

Increasingly, proposals from then- President Donald Trump to state governing bodies have intended to crack the firewall between church and public schools, an effort that civil liberties groups say undermines equal treatment of all faiths and threatens religious minorities.

Public schools have been barred from leading students in classroom prayer since 1962, when the Supreme Court ruled it was a violation of the First Amendment clause forbidding the establishment of a government religion.

The Supreme Court case brought by a coach fired for praying on the field addressed the balance between the religious and free speech rights of teachers and staff and the rights of students not to feel coerced into religious practices. The decision to back a praying football coach aligned with a series of rulings in favor of religious plaintiffs .

Concept of chaplains is ‘very gray’

Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S. But the modern role is “very gray,” said Wendy Cadge, director of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, in that it’s not uniform or universally understood.

Chaplains serve in the U.S. Congress, military, and correctional facilities, and each has rigorous requirements for hiring and service. Hospitals, police and fire departments, colleges and private companies also hire chaplains with wide-ranging standards.

Many chaplains have seminary or ministry training in and the endorsement of a particular faith. But chaplains serving in multicultural places also may be required to bring professional, supervised training called clinical pastoral education.

Major hospitals are especially likely to employ chaplains with, and offer training in, clinical pastoral education.

Patients and their families are regularly experiencing existential crises and are vulnerable, said Eric Johnson, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines-area hospitals.

The training helps chaplains learn how to serve untethered to their faith so “transference or reactivity doesn’t get in the way of really attending to people’s needs,” Johnson said.

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Want to Be a Roth IRA Millionaire? 3 Tips All Retirees Should Know

April 07, 2024 — 04:45 am EDT

Written by Chuck Saletta for The Motley Fool  ->

Properly used, a Roth IRA can be an incredibly powerful tool for your retirement. Once in your Roth IRA, your money can grow tax-free inside that account for the rest of your life. Plus, once you're eligible, if you need to tap the money, qualifying withdrawals are also completely tax-free.

As awesome as a Roth IRA can be, however, those two words -- "properly used" -- make all the difference when it comes to getting the most out of the plan. All current and prospective retirees should know these three tips to be a Roth IRA millionaire.

Image source: Getty Images.

No. 1: Start early

Roth IRAs have a handful of "five-year rules" you must abide by to get your money out of them completely tax-free. One of those rules is that in order to withdraw your earnings tax-free, your Roth IRA must have been open and funded for at least five years. That rule holds true even if you are above age 59 and a half and would otherwise qualify for tax-free withdrawals.

As a result, it's important to start getting money into your Roth IRA early to keep that five-year rule from becoming a barrier to withdrawing cash once you've reached a standard retirement age.

No. 2: You can get money into a Roth IRA through a 'backdoor'

Strict income limits make it difficult for high-income earners to get money directly into a Roth IRA. Even more challenging, those income limits are based on your modified adjusted gross income, which includes most investment income, such as dividends, interest, and capital gains.

As a result, if your income is close to or over the limits, it can be tempting to not contribute to a Roth IRA or to wait until your income is more certain for the year before doing so. Fortunately, you might still be able to get money into a Roth IRA even if your income would otherwise prohibit it.

This is because of a concept known as a backdoor Roth IRA . Basically, if you contribute to a traditional IRA and then quickly convert the money from the traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you can get it into your Roth IRA through that backdoor approach.

The backdoor Roth IRA concept works no matter how high your income is, but you do need enough taxable compensation (basically earnings from work) to contribute to your traditional IRA.

No. 3: You can use a Roth IRA conversion ladder to help you retire early

Although generally, you must be at least age 59 and a half to get your earnings out of your Roth IRA tax-free, the rules are much friendlier when taking out your contributions . Money you directly contribute to your Roth IRA can be taken out at any time for any reason without taxes or penalties. Money you put into your Roth IRA via a rollover or conversion from a traditional-style retirement plan can be taken out after it ages in the Roth IRA for at least five years.

In addition, when withdrawing money from a Roth IRA, your direct contributions come out first, then your rollover and conversion contributions in the order you made them. Only after those are withdrawn would you start tapping your earnings.

Those rules give rise to an early retirement funding approach known as a Roth IRA conversion ladder . After you build a decent balance in traditional retirement accounts, you start rolling over that money to your Roth IRA in stages, making a partial shift each year.

By beginning those conversions at least five years before you're ready to retire, you can build up a balance of Roth rollover contributions. Five years after each rollover conversion, you can withdraw the originally converted amount with no additional taxes due on it.

This approach offers a key advantage over other ways to tap your retirement money early in that you can always take less out if you find you don't need all the money you've converted. This contrasts with the other key way to get money out of your retirement plans early without penalties, which is through a process known as substantially equal periodic payments (SEPP) .

The downside of SEPP withdrawals is that once you start them, you must continue them until you reach age 59 and a half or have taken at least five years of such payments, whichever is longer. If you later decide to go back to work or discover that your expenses are less than you originally thought, you're still stuck taking out those payments until that timer pops.

Get started now

Used well, a Roth IRA can be an incredible tool to help you manage your money throughout your career and retirement. Especially when you add backdoor contributions and conversions to the mix, it can even help you reach millionaire status.

Still, the biggest benefits that Roth IRAs offer typically have at least a five-year waiting period before you can take advantage of them. So, make today the day you get started on your quest to become a Roth IRA millionaire. The sooner you get started, the sooner you'll pass the first five-year hurdle, and the better your chances are of reaching that goal.

The $ 22,924 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook

If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $ 22,924 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies.

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Chuck Saletta has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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