Free Tuition

Play video: The InformED Report: Episode 5 (3 minutes 17 seconds)3:17

In the final days of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s promise of tuition-free public college for most families was one of the few education proposals voters heard repeatedly. The InformED Report for November 3, 2016 looked at what Germany’s experience suggested about free tuition and how Clinton planned to pay for hers. It then reported on families in Texas, Flint and New York who said children with disabilities were being denied the services federal law guarantees, and on new Google and Gallup research showing who gets to study computer science in school.

In this edition

• Germany’s tuition-free universities showed both the appeal and the strains of free college, a model Clinton proposed for the U.S.
• Clinton’s plan would make public college tuition free for households earning up to $125,000, at a cost of $450 billion.
• Texas had the lowest special education enrollment in the nation, and Flint families announced a proposed class action over special education services.
• A New York for-profit preschool company agreed to pay more than $4.3 million for misusing special education funds.
• Black students were 1.5 times as interested in computer science as their white peers but less likely to have classes in it.

Free college: the German example and the Clinton plan

Jon Marcus, writing in Quartz, went to Berlin’s Freie Universität to see how tuition-free higher education looked from the inside. Two students, Claudia Niessler and Stefan Steinbock, said they would not have attended a university that charged tuition, and that free tuition let students with good grades and low incomes earn degrees. The university’s president, Peter-André Alt, saw the other side: without tuition revenue, universities were overcrowded and stretched thin, and taxpayers who never attended college were paying to fill the gap. The article’s headline drew the lesson for the U.S.: tuition-free college was no silver bullet for America’s education problems.

In the Washington Post, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel examined how Clinton would pay for her version. During the final debate, Clinton said tuition at public colleges and universities would be free for students from households earning up to $125,000, as part of a $450 billion higher education plan. Her campaign had first proposed a $350 billion plan, the New College Compact, which would give money to states that guarantee “no-loan” tuition at four-year public universities and community colleges. To pay for it, the campaign said Clinton would bring back Reagan-era cuts to itemized tax deductions for high-income families.

A Michigan story in Inside Higher Ed showed how improvised college funding can become permanent. During the recession of the late 2000s, the state began directing federal welfare money to state college tuition grants. Andrew Kreighbaum reported that more than $93 million of Michigan’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families allocation went to tuition grants, with more than $40 million going to private institutions in fiscal 2016. Taken together, the three pieces moved the free-college debate toward the questions of who would pay, and what universities would give up to make it work.

Children with disabilities and the services they were owed

Texas had the lowest special education enrollment in the nation. KERA News’s Bill Zeeble reported that, a month after the Houston Chronicle found the state had for 12 years delayed or withheld services to save money, federal authorities were asking Texas to justify its policies. Rosly Espinoza described years of trying to get help for her daughter Citlali, whose struggles began in pre-kindergarten and worsened by second grade. Espinoza asked the school to evaluate her daughter, the step required before services can begin, and the school did not.

In Flint, Michigan, ThinkProgress’s Bryce Covert reported that the water crisis had compounded learning challenges for children who already had them. Nakiya Wakes said her son, who has ADHD, was suspended more than 50 times in a year, and that the school fought her request for an Individualized Education Program. “We didn’t ask to be poisoned, and these kids need their education,” she said. Flint families, with the ACLU of Michigan, the law firm White & Case and the Education Law Center, announced a proposed class action alleging that the state and the Flint school system were already failing children with special needs before the crisis.

In New York, The New York Times’s Kate Taylor reported that the for-profit company K3 Learning Inc. and the family behind it had agreed to pay the state more than $4.3 million. State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office said money meant for special education preschool had gone to credit card bills, a boat and a son’s law school tuition.

The three cases were different in cause, but each turned on the same duty. A district must evaluate a child it has reason to suspect has a disability, and money set aside for those children has to reach them. For special education directors, the stories were a reason to check how quickly evaluation requests were answered and how closely contracted services were audited.

The gaps in computer science education

New research from Google and Gallup, reported by Jessica Guynn in USA Today, found that Black students were less likely to have computer science classes at school and less likely to use computers at home, even though they were 1.5 times as interested in studying the subject as their white peers. In The Atlantic, Emily DeRuy reported that just over half of students in grades 7 through 12 attended a school offering a dedicated computer science class, and that teachers and parents were more likely to tell boys than girls they would be good at it.

A coalition of computer scientists had just released a framework describing what K-12 students should know about computer science, and organizations from the National Science Foundation and the College Board to Code.org and Girls Who Code were working to expand access. For school leaders, the survey suggested that student interest was already there. Offering the course, and making sure counselors and teachers encouraged every student to take it, was where schools could act.

Sources

• Jon Marcus, “Germany proves tuition-free college is not a silver bullet for America’s education woes,” Quartz, October 2016.
• Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, “Clinton touts debt-free college plan. Here’s how she’d pay for it,” The Washington Post, October 19, 2016.
• Andrew Kreighbaum, “Welfare Funds for Students Far From Welfare,” Inside Higher Ed, October 18, 2016.
• Bill Zeeble, “In Texas, Families With Special Education Needs Feel Their Kids Are Getting Shortchanged,” KERA News, October 2016.
• Bryce Covert, “Families in Flint say there’s a special education crisis that’s about to get worse,” ThinkProgress, October 2016.
• Kate Taylor, “Education Company to Pay $4.3 Million in Settlement With New York State,” The New York Times, October 19, 2016.
• Jessica Guynn, “Google: Race, gender gaps persist in computer science education,” USA Today, October 18, 2016.
• Emily DeRuy, “A Plan to Teach Every Child Computer Science,” The Atlantic, October 2016.

About the InformED Report

The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on November 3, 2016. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.

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