As we all should know, Sen. Bernie Sanders’, current Democratic presidential candidate’s plan for making public college tuition more affordable is relatively straightforward: He wants the government to pay for it. All of it.
The Democratic presidential candidate and independent senator from Vermont introduced legislation intended to eliminate tuition fees for undergraduates at all public colleges. Annual tuition costs at institutions add up to roughly about $70 billion, according to a fact sheet from Sanders' office. The proposed legislation would require federal government to compensate for two-thirds of that, with the states making up the additional third.
Speaking to students that attend community colleges in the Metro Atlanta Area, I got a few opinions on how people feel about the proposal. “It’s sad that hundreds of thousands of people today can’t go to college, not because they’re unqualified, but because they can’t afford it,” Student, Antonietta Murray, of Atlanta Metropolitan State College said. “This is helpful to create a better economy and a more vibrant middle class."
College tuition costs have skyrocketed since the middle of the 20th century, rising by 1,120 percent between 1978 and 2012. This has forced each consecutive generation of students to take on ever-increasing debt: The recently graduated college class of 2015 has an average debt burden of $35,051 per student, the highest of any time in U.S. history.
Students like Kamron Brown sees an opportunity to go to college for people that didn’t exist before. Raised by a mother who came to the United States from Haiti and didn’t attend college herself, Brown said his family had no money to pay for school. “I went through a little stage where I was kind of feeling down, I didn’t know what I was going to do after high school. I think it’s a really good thing because it helps people like those of my family,” Brown said. “It gives them a hope for something.”
President Barack Obama continues to call for free community college nationwide, and 2016 presidential candidates are laying out their own plans to make college more affordable. While Obama outlined a plan in January that’s since been proposed in legislation introduced by several Democratic lawmakers, however, the chances of community colleges nationwide becoming free are slim.